Sixth International Conference on Immersion and Dual Language Education: Connecting Research and Practice Across Contexts

Symposium (2 hours + 15 minutes)

English

One-Way Second/Foreign Language Immersion
Co-Official/Regional Language Immersion
Two-Way Bilingual Immersion

Elementary (K-5)
Middle School/Junior High
High School

This symposium brings together researchers from across the world who use Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to examine pedagogic practices and drive forward theoretical understanding of the integration of content and language in educational contexts where teaching academic content through a second/foreign language forms a substantial part of the curriculum.

Social-semiotic and Functional Approaches to Language and Content Integration in Bilingual/Multilingual Education

Symposium organized by 

Ana Llinares, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and 

Tom Morton, University of London - Birkbeck

This symposium brings together researchers from around the world who use Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to investigate content and language integration in educational contexts where the learning/teaching of academic content is combined with the use and learning of an L2 as a substantial part of the curriculum. These contexts can go under different labels, such as immersion, content-based instruction, English-medium instruction or Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). According to Ortega and Byrnes (2008: 294), SFL is an approach to language and language analysis which links language use to its sociocultural contexts, sees language as a meaning-making system, provides tools for linguistic analysis of written and spoken texts, embodies a functional approach to grammar in context, and recognises the effect of educational practices on language use and literacy development. It is not surprising, then, that there has recently been a surge in interest in SFL-based approaches to investigate educational practices where content and L2 use/learning are combined. Llinares (2015) has shown how SFL provides tools for the analysis of both the products and processes of content and language integration. These tools include the metafunctions of language (ideational, interpersonal, textual), genre and register theory, and speech roles and functions. The symposium includes studies carried out in CLIL/immersion educational contexts from different parts of the world (Europe, Asia, the US). They illustrate different aspects of a social-semiotic and functional approach to content and language integration, often in combination with other perspectives, such as cognitive discourse functions, task-based learning, legitimation code theory, and usage-based linguistics. This multi-theoretical focus, together with a rich representation of different bilingual/multilingual educational contexts, will hopefully lead to a stimulating theoretical and pedadogic discussion and exploration of key issues in content and language integrated learning.

Exploring Content and Language Co-construction in CLIL with Semantic Waves

Angel Lin and Yuen Yi Lo, The University of Hong Kong

Academic discourse deploys ‘power words’ and ‘power grammar’ to construe disciplinary knowledge (Martin, 2013). This poses great challenges for learners, especially English language learners (ELL). Content subject teachers often ‘unpack’ academic discourse by concretising/ recontextualising abstract concepts and fleshing out the condensed meanings of technical terms. However, they seldom ‘repack’ academic discourse, which is essential for learners to master complex academic knowledge (Maton, 2013). In Maton’s Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) ‘Semantic waves’, which model recurrent shifts between unpacking and repacking, is “key to cumulative knowledge-building” (Maton, 2013, p.8). Applying the concepts of ‘semantic waves’, this paper analyses how content and language are co-constructed in CLIL lessons in Hong Kong, where students are learning content subjects through their L2, English. Our analyses of two science lessons reveal some forms of ‘semantic waves’ – the teachers adopted various useful strategies to ‘unpack’ science concepts and language, especially with multimodalities (e.g. models, video clips, visuals) and students’ L1 resources; they also attempted to ‘repack’ academic language by providing explicit instruction on academic language and guiding students through academic writing tasks. These findings yield interesting insights into content and language integration in EFL CLIL contexts. 

Reconceptualizing the Structures Underlying Academic Language Learning in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) Classrooms

Thomas Somers, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

This paper brings together two hitherto unrelated theoretical and methodological frameworks, Usage-Based Linguistics (UBL) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), in order to investigate students' development of locally/contextually grounded, emergent inventories of interactional resources and routines in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) classrooms. Under this combined socio-functional view, academic language learning is envisioned as an experiential and item-based process from concrete chunks of language to abstract ‘constructions’ encoding semantic, pragmatic and discourse functions. Data consist of classroom recordings from social sciences CLIL secondary classrooms in the Community of Madrid. The analysis of interactional patterns focusses on how teacher's discourse and instructional practices in the target language in CLIL classrooms (can) model subject-specific discourse for students, and scaffolds students’ use and learning of subject-specific discourse, promoting its effective production by and among students in order to allow them to become successful users of academic discourse.

Combining Systemic Functional Linguistics and Cognitive Discourse Functions in Analysing Upper Primary Learners’ Expression of Science and History Content in L2 English

Ana Llinares, Natalia Evnitskaya and Rachel Whittaker, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

Tom Morton, University of London - Birkbeck

This paper presents the analysis of upper primary students’ use of L2 English to express science and history content. The analysis was carried out using an instrument developed to combine Dalton-Puffer’s (2013) cognitive discourse functions and previous work on content and language integration in CLIL contexts using Systemic Functional Linguistics (Llinares, Morton & Whittaker, 2012). The findings reported are drawn from a wider project that focuses on the transition from primary to secondary education in a European CLIL context. The larger study follows the same students from grade 6 (primary school) to grade 7 (secondary school). In this first stage of analysis, we compare grade 6 students’ (11-12 year old) written and spoken use of the foreign language for the expression of specific cognitive discourse functions such as defining, describing, reporting or arguing with their use of the L1 (Spanish) for the expression of the same functions. These results are compared with these students’ performance in external examinations on English language competence as well as Spanish and Maths.

Expressing ‘Voice’ in a Foreign Language Across Content-subject Tasks

Christiane Dalton-Puffer, Universität Wien

Ana Llinares, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

Some consider CLIL to be a “particular pedagogic manifestation of the task-based approach” (Skehan 1998, 276). Often however, non-language subjects (e.g. history, biology) drive CLIL more strongly than principles of  foreign-language teaching; hence, the importance of exploring the opportunities and challenges that subject-driven tasks offer for CLIL students’ use and development of the foreign language in their expression of academic content. One requirement for reaching the curricular goal of learning subject content, especially at higher levels of schooling, is to be able to evaluate or express “voice” on content and actively carry out such evaluative acts in classroom tasks. In this study we examine learners working on a range of naturalistic tasks during their CLIL lessons in three European contexts (Austria, Finland, Spain). The aims of the analysis are a) to explore the correlation of students’ performance of the cognitive discourse functions explore and evaluate (Dalton-Puffer, 2013) with different tasks; and b) to identify the frequency and types of appraisal used by the students to participate in these functions.

Bilingual Academic Language Development: Language Patterns Across Spanish and English School Genres

Andrés Ramirez & Sabrina Sembiante, Florida Atlantic University

Luciana de Oliveira, University of Miami

The academic content that emergent bilinguals (EBs) need to access in school is specialized and highly dependent on knowledge and use of particular language features (Schleppegrell, 2004; Gibbons, 2006). This demand is even more prominent in dual language programs as EBs are called to access academic content in two languages. Based on a preliminary functional analysis of a corpus of Spanish and English school genres in core content areas in grades 3 through 5, this presentation reports on genre-based similarities and differences across these texts. Presenters will describe the distinctive characteristics of the academic language demands of English and Spanish. In addition, they will present salient, potential linguistic challenges of the content areas of language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies in 3rd through 5th grade Spanish and English texts. Results carry several important implications for teaching the content areas to dual language learners at the elementary level.