Professor from the University of Queensland gives special seminar on CLIL
Professor Ceara McManus from the Institute of Continuing & TESOL Education at the University of Queensland, an Osaka Kyoiku University partner school in Australia, was invited to OKU campus to give a special seminar on CLIL* for 5 days from February 15 (Monday) to 19 (Friday). The seminar, which was hosted by the English Education course and the Global Education Center, was attended by over 20 people including OKU students and teachers.
CLIL, which emphasizes the three goals of content, language, and learning skills, involves the teaching of subject matter in the target language. CLIL is currently a topic of great interest among many English language educators because it follows the same path as native language acquisition and increases students’ motivation to learn.
The seminar centered on group work and pair work, and Professor McManus shared many activities to use in CLIL classes. The activities, which were aimed at developing language skill, knowledge related to the subject, and learning skills, were conducted as games in pairs or groups, and while doing so participants shared their opinions about how they could apply the lessons they learned to their classes. Many of the participants were students majoring in English Education, and many of them remarked that the approach of teaching other subjects in English was refreshing and they learned a lot from it. The five-day seminar was concluded with a ceremony in which participants were awarded certificates of completion.
*CLIL: Short for Content and Language Integrated Learning. A learning approach that involves learning academic content (subjects such as social studies and mathematics/science or topics such as current affairs and cross-cultural understanding) along with language (essentially English) skills.