The integration of content and language in students’ task answer production in the bilingual classroom

ABSTRACT

The notion of content and language integration has recently become a key topic of inquiry in research on content and language integrated learning and other kinds of bilingual educational programmes. Understanding what integration is and how it happens is of fundamental importance not only for researchers interested in gauging the possibilities and limitations of bilingual programmes, but also for practitioners seeking optimal ways to support student development. This study investigates integration as it takes place in the context of collaborative writing in the classroom. Drawing on conversation analytic methodology, text production is investigated as a social and sequentially evolving phenomenon. The analysis focuses on interactional sequences through which secondary school students produce and revise written task answer formulations. Sequential analyses of selected interactions describe the interactional organisation of the focal practice and show how, in their negotiation about what and how to write, students integrate content and language in everyday school work. It is argued that an investigation of what is at stake to students when they produce texts can shed light on their practical orientations to content and language integration. Based on such perspectives, integration appears a more complex phenomenon than the interface of form and meaning.

KEYWORDS:

• Content and language integration
• CLIL
• conversation analysis (CA)
• peer interaction
• writing

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to Tarja Nikula and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive comments to previous versions of this article. All remaining errors, omissions and shortcomings are mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Teppo Jakonen works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Languages, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. His research interests lie in exploring the role of social interaction for language and content learning as well as the management of language use norms in bilingual classrooms. Previous articles by Dr. Jakonen have appeared in journals such as Applied Linguistics, Journal of Pragmatics, and Linguistics and Education.

Notes

1 The course readings are not directly reproduced in the article because they contain copyrighted material. However, they are available upon request from the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by a postdoctoral grant from the Finnish Cultural Foundation.