Developing FL literacy in CLIL contexts Erasmus Project

Project Title

Developing FL literacy in CLIL contexts

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Pedagogy and didactics; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; Teaching and learning of foreign languages

Project Summary

The introduction of CLIL programs in primary and secondary education has had a strong impact on the teaching approach in the content subjects, but much less so on the way English language is taught. This lack of methodological adaptation compromises the possible synergies that could be established between content subjects taught in the foreign language and foreign language teaching itself. Furthermore, language lessons fail to prepare students for the work in the foreign language required by the content subjects. It is thus necessary to develop an approach to EFL teaching in CLIL programs that is adapted to the particular characteristics of this type of teaching program.
This was the starting point for this project, which aimed at developing and testing precisely such approach for primary EFL (years 3 to 5). The approach which was developed was based on the assumption that students need to develop their literacy skills in the foreign language (in this case, English) as much as in the mother tongue if they are to study content subjects through this foreign language.
Starting from a needs analysis carried out in all three participating countries, the project designed and piloted a training course in literacy-based EFL teaching in which 10 teachers coming from the partner schools in each country took part. The course itself was piloted with this group of teachers, who then put the approach to language teaching itself to the test by designing, implementing and evaluating 10 units of work for EFL in grades 3 to 5 in transnational teams. Once the training course and the implementation of the literacy units had been evaluated, they transformed into a MOOC, thus making the training in literacy-based foreign language teaching available to teachers worldwide. The teaching units themselves, as well as materials illustrating their implementation and their learning effect made available through an open-access repository. The final stage of the project was designing a transnational FL literacy module that would be taught at partner universities as part of the Master’s programme.
The project aimed to develop a teaching approach to English that has the potential of changing foreign language teaching as such, and of contributing to the development of a strong, cross-curricular approach to literacy development in schools. This, in turn, has the potential to place literacy development right at the centre of primary education curricula, which ultimately “is likely to significantly remove barriers to further education and training, and reduce social inequalities”. (EU High Level Literacy Group of Experts on Literacy 2012, p. 26)

Project Website

http://lit4clil.uw.edu.pl

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 253717 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIWERSYTET WARSZAWSKI & Country: PL

Project Partners

• DWUJEZYCZNA SZKOLA PODSTAWOWA SMART SCHOOL
• UNIVERZA V LJUBLJANI
• Fundación educación marianista Domingo de Lázaro- Colegio Nuestra Señora del Pilar
• Osnovna sola Preserje pri Radomljah
• Ogolnopolskie Stowarzyszenie Dwujezycznosci Bilinguis
• UNIVERSIDAD DE ALCALA
• Osnovna sola Ivana Tavcarja Gorenja vas