Language as a Means…But How? por Alejandra Ottolina

Alejandra Ottolina, Director of Studies at Santa Monica School of Languages is an experienced teacher and teacher trainer, accredited for COTE, DOTE and ICELT – University of Cambridge, who has lectured in Argentina as well as in neighbouring countries. She has taught all levels in both the private and public sectors and currently supervises the English department of more than thirty institutions.
Co-author of Road to Success. In 2004 Alejandra joined the Macmillan team as a course consultant for WINNERS and author of the Teacher’s Books and BONUS for Winners and the CLIL section of Switch On among others.
INSP Lenguas Vivas

In order to decide whether a CLIL approach is suitable for our teaching reality or not, we should first of all define CLIL and analyze the implications that it may have both for us, teachers, and for our learners. We all know that if our objective is communicative competence, we should respect certain classroom principles such as meaningful learning, production – instead of mere understanding, a safe environment for students to feel confident in and therefore use the target language, etc. The main question is then: How? Some of us only have two contact hours a week…
Next, we ought to focus on the wide scope of advantages that CLIL offers us and which range from student motivation to teacher self-development. Still, the main question remains the same. Is it possible to put all this into practice in our context? If so, how?
Methodology has historically adjusted itself to certain times, needs and environments, allowing us to speak about eclectic approaches, not as an easy way to justify mistakes but as a real alternative, as the only chance to take the best or the most suitable from each method. Perhaps we should once again be selective, taking from CLIL what will best help my students, what will best match my personality and teaching style, what will make me feel an educator rather than just a teacher. This has to do with communicative strategies, with content and with curricular integration as well as with teacher’s work and development.
Having analyzed CLIL from a realistic and practical point of view, it is true that we still have the HOW question… Join us and we will find the answer! We will go through the different variables that will affect our teaching and will discuss clear examples.