Teacher language awareness and scaffolded interaction in CLIL science classrooms

Abstract

Teacher language awareness (TLA) constitutes the teacher’s self-reflective knowledge about the operation of language systems in pedagogical practices. This study focuses on teachers’ understanding of learning of language and learning through language in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) contexts, exploring how teachers proceduralise their knowledge of language to facilitate science learning in Hong Kong. By analysing the reflective relationship between TLA and scaffolding strategies of two teachers (students n = 31; 32) during a set of lessons in a secondary school, this paper suggests that it is critical to re-orient the TLA focus from teachers to the act of learning and learners’ needs. This expanded conceptual framework of TLA sheds light on how to transform teachers’ implicit knowledge of language into explicit awareness of scaffolding in class. The TLA-filtered, scaffolded interactions can therefore promote the use of language not merely for pedagogical purposes but also as a cognitive learning tool.

Novice teachers’ use of pedagogical language knowledge to humanize language and literacy development

“…Participants' regular use of these practices reveals their PLK as essential to their work with multilingual students. Though prior research has offered examples of experienced teachers' application of PLK (e.g., Lucero, 2015;Swanson et al, 2014;Xu & Harfitt, 2019;Zisselsberger, 2016), the present study demonstrates that novice teachers are also able to enact humanizing instruction informed by PLK.…”

“…Swanson, Bianchini, and Lee (2014) observed deliberate linguistic scaffolding and home language support in the practice of a high school teacher who had taught science for 7 years. Xu and Harfitt (2019) observed similar scaffolding practices among two Hong Kong science teachers with 8 and 10 years of experience, respectively: They offered home language support, actively mediated between "everyday" and "teacher" language, and elicited higher order thinking through adaptive questioning (p. 224). Finally, Lucero (2015) found that dual-language teachers with 7 or more years of experience drew on their PLK by frequently implementing linguistic scaffolding.…”

A Typology of English-Medium Instruction

“…Teaching modes may also vary considerably. Xu and Harfitt (2019: 213) comment that in Hong Kong “the same subject can be conducted primarily in Chinese and sometimes in English for certain units of the subject in some schools whereas in others, the subject can be taught entirely in English (or in Chinese)”. Hence, the quantity of English used in an EMI classroom may vary, ranging from substantial to sporadic, and may also vary according to the amount of spoken versus written English that occurs (Czura and Papaja, 2013).…”

Students’ beliefs about the role of interaction for science learning and language learning in EMI science classes: Evidence from high schools in China

“…Thus, recent studies have also focused on how classroom interaction in EMI settings can integrate language learning. For example, researchers have examined how teachers use questioning to help students gain specificity in their use of the language of science (Ho et al, 2019), how teachers switch from the content plane to the language plane to provide language-focused episodes (An et al, 2019), how classroom discourse can effectively introduce and help retain new science terminology (Seah & Silver, 2020), and how scaffolding of science learning can be more language aware (Xu & Harfitt, 2019). These studies highlight the importance of language development in EMI science classes.…”