Content-based instruction and content and language integrated learning: the same or different?

Abstract

This article looks at the characteristics of Content-Based Instruction (CBI) and Content land Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in order to examine their similarities and differences. The analysis shows that CBI/CLIL programmes share the same essential properties and are not pedagogically different from each other. In fact, the use of an L2 as the medium of instruction, the language, societal and educational aims and the typical type of child are the same in CBI and CLIL programmes. The use of both CBI and CLIL refers to programmes where academic content is taught through a second or additional language and the preference for one term over the other is associated with contextual and accidental characteristics. In this article, there are examples from Basque education where academic content is often taught through the medium of Basque and English to students with Spanish as a first language. The examples show that even if there are more subjects taught through the medium of Basque than through the medium of English, there are no essential differences between CBI (partial immersion in the Basque example) and CLIL (English-medium instruction in the Basque example). The need to share the research findings of CBI/ CLIL programmes is highlighted.Keywords: content-based instruction; CLIL; multilingual education; language teaching; Basque; English A school in the Basque Country We visit a class in a school located in the Basque Country where Basque is spoken by approximately 30% of the population. The use of Basque is not the same in different areas and our school is located in a Spanish-speaking area, Bilbo Handia-Gran Bilbao, in the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) where only 23.1% of the population can speak Basque and Spanish is the majority language spoken by the whole population. There are 22 students in this class. The students are in the third year of secondary school (14-15 years old). All the students have Spanish as a first language except for two immigrant children who speak Romanian at home. These immigrant children also have Spanish as their dominant language because they have lived in the Basque Country for more than 10 years, and they speak Spanish to their classmates. They can understand Romanian very well but they often answer their parents in Spanish and they always speak Spanish with their © 2015 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.*Email: jasone.cenoz@ehu.es Language, Culture and Curriculum, 2015 Vol. 28, No. 1, 8-24, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2014 friends. The class we visit is what is known in the Basque Country as the B model which has Basque and Spanish as the languages of instruction (see Cenoz, 2009). This ...

Gamifying Content and Language Integrated Learning with Serious Videogames

“…Thus, this article focuses on the possibility of combining serious videogames and content and language integrated subjects. To this purpose, this paper has introduced the principles of CLIL and CBI (Cenoz, 2015;Marsh, 2002) and the theory of the '4 C' to integrate content and language (Coyle et al, 2010). On the other hand, the characteristics of serious games and videogame genres have also been introduced (Malone, 1981;Adams, 2013).…”

“…The most usual approaches in this context are CLIL and CBI, whose differences are insignificant and according to some authors near inexistent (Cenoz, 2015). CBI was first originated in the 1960s in some areas in Canada where both French and English are official languages, as well as other aboriginal languages.…”

“…CBI was first originated in the 1960s in some areas in Canada where both French and English are official languages, as well as other aboriginal languages. This approach focuses on teaching content in a foreign language, but none or little attention is paid to the L2 (Cenoz, 2015). On the other hand, CLIL was developed and spread in Europe in the 1990s and 2000s.…”

“…This motivates students to continue playing and learning until they win or fulfill the purpose of the game. In sum, this section has introduced the steps for gamification following Butler (2016), Malone (1981), and Robson et al (2015), among other authors as well as the principles of CLIL and the theories to integrate content and language (Cenoz, 2015;Coyle, 2005;Marsh, 2002). Having considered these ideas, this article focuses on the development of a possible model for the gamification of subjects and their materials in which content and language are integrated.…”

Teachers develop CLIL materials in Argentina: A workshop experience

“…Consequently, there have been attempts to distinguish CLIL from its counterpart in Canada and the USA, CBI (content-based instruction), and from immersion education (Cenoz et al, 2013). However, similarities between CBI and CLIL, and the fuzzy line between CLIL and immersion, have been lately discussed (Banegas, 2012;Cenoz, 2015;Cenoz et al, 2013;Somers & Surmont, 2012). More recently, some authors have stressed the content side of CLIL (see Llinares et al, 2012), but there is wide recognition that although the research reports on language gains realized through CLIL, little has been said about content learning.…”