Page 20 - ELG1911 Nov Issue 467

El•Gazette 467.qxp_El•Gazette 467 23/10/2019 13:10 Page 20

TRENDS: CLIL .

Good CLIL hunting

Why go overseas for a CLIl training course? Melanie Butler explains

here is no mystery about why an PIXABAY
increasing number of state school
systems across Europe are adopting
TCLIL: it works, as the Spanish study
we describe on the opposite page has shown.
The mystery is why so few local private
language schools have adopted it. There are
one or two honourable exceptions: the St
James Language Centres in Seville, Spain
adopted it as a method for younger learners at
least a decade ago; while in China, the
Language chain offers English through CLIL
in Maths, Science, Music and Art.
In general, local language schools have
stuck with the knitting: general English
courses taught by native speakers leading to
international tests offered by boards such as
Cambridge, Trinity or People Cert. And,
outside the summer schools where CLIL is
beginning to blossom, the same is generally
true for private language schools in the
English-speaking world.
So, here’s another mystery. Why do so
many CLIL teachers travel to private
language schools in English-speaking
countries every summer to do CLIL training? Bilingual maths - not a problem?
The short answer is, it is to improve both
their language levels and their teaching have been at the cutting edge of CLIL summer programme is an EL Gazette Centre
methodology. To be more precise, they need development since the beginning. of Excellence.
to improve the English needed to teach their IH, Bell and NILE have another thing in There must also be equally good schools in
subject in the classroom, because the common: they are up in the top twenty in the other countries but since their inspection
evidence is that unless teachers are at least B2 EL Gazette rankings, based on the scores they reports are not published, we have no
in that subset of language, their students will received on their British Council inspections. objective way of identifying them.
learn very little. But there is another kind of provider which
And, of course, since they are teaching is common across Ireland and the UK – the
both an academic subject and a language, Unless teachers are specialist trainers – schools which offer a wide
they need to find out how to include language range of training courses specifically for non-
teaching methods into their classroom at least B2 in that native teachers.
practice. These include schools which mostly
So, where should these teachers head to subset of language, concentrate on training, such as IPC in
and what kind of language school should they their students will learn Exeter and ADC, now in both London and
look for? Dublin. Then there are those which offer a
One obvious starting point is the language very little. broad range of training programmes, as well as
training giants and these are mostly to be year-round student courses. These include
found in the UK. Perhaps the biggest name schools like Cork English Centre and Alpha
worldwide is International House. Known to Scoring high in British Council inspections College in Ireland, ETI in Malta and Richard
its friends as IH, this group of affiliated is another area to look at for CLIL courses. Language college in Bournemouth, which also
schools pioneered the use of the short, hands- High scorers include top-ranking schools like arranges attachments in UK state schools.
on teacher training course and adapted it Lake School of English, which employs CLIL The growth in CLIL courses in Malta seems
over the years for many different teaching material-writers to teach on its teacher an obvious next step. CLIL programmes are
situations, including CLIL; both IH training courses; Liverpool School of English, essentially bilingual, using two languages in
Newcastle and IH London offer CLIL one of our top year-round schools for young the same classroom, so why not run the
methodology courses. learners; and one of our top-ranking Further programmes in bilingual countries?
Of course, the other big training names also Education centres, Hilderstone College, which We are looking forward to the advent of
offer CLIL methodology courses, including has been running CLIL and other overseas CLIL training in Cyprus, a bilingual country
Bell, Pilgrims and the fastest growing teachers’ courses for more than 40 years. where the use of CLIL methodology is
newcomer, British Study Centres. But in CLIL In fact, three out of the six schools who common in schools. And how about CLIL
specialists, the name that stands out is NILE achieved a perfect score on inspection have courses in the UK’s only bilingual bastion –
Norwich, whose tradition of hiring expert long-running CLIL courses, including ELC Wales, where, as the saying goes, “Cenedl heb
trainers from across the world to teach on Brighton, LSI Portsmouth and Wimbledon iaith, cenedl heb gallon” (A nation without a
their summer courses has meant that they School of English, whose own Young Learners language, is a nation without a heart).
20 November 2019