Exploring content and language co-construction in CLIL with semantic waves

ABSTRACT

In content and language integrated learning (CLIL) classrooms, it is assumed that non-language content subjects provide more authentic communicative contexts for students to learn a foreign/second/additional language (L2). However, learning abstract concepts and academic language in an L2 simultaneously is also challenging for CLIL students. It is thus important for CLIL teachers to unpack and repack both abstract concepts and academic discourse for the students. ‘Semantic waves’, which model classroom practices of both unpacking and repacking, is arguably a key to understanding cumulative knowledge-building. Applying the concepts of semantic profiles and semantic waves, this paper analyses the classroom discourse of two CLIL science lessons in Hong Kong. In one lesson, the semantic profile mainly consists of downward shifts. The teacher adopted various useful strategies to unpack science concepts, especially with multimodalities, everyday L2 and students’ L1 resources. Yet, there was limited repacking. In contrast, some repacking was observed in another lesson, where the teacher provided explicit instruction on academic language and guided students through academic writing tasks. A semantic wave can thus be observed there. These findings on strategies for unpacking and repacking provide significant insights into knowledge building in CLIL contexts, and may hence illuminate CLIL pedagogical practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Bilingual education
• content and language integrated learning (CLIL)
• classroom discourse

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We did not include ‘power composition’ (the remaining part of the ‘power trio’) in our analysis, mainly because it was not observed in our existing collection of CLIL lessons. This may be due to two reasons. First, over 70% of our lessons were observed at the junior secondary level. As Excerpt 2 reveals, junior secondary students are often required to write short paragraphs, instead of essays. Second, teachers in our observed lessons (and also in other educational contexts) did not pay too much attention to helping their students write subject-specific genres. They tend to focus on subject-specific vocabulary (Cammarata and Haley 2018; Koopman, Skeet, and de Graaff 2014).

2 The lesson excerpt has been analysed in Lin and Lo (2017), focusing on how the teacher co-constructed language and content with students, with reference to the notions of translanguaging and thematic patterns.

3 In Figures 1 and 3, there are fixed combinations between SG− and SD+, as well as between SG+ and SD−. These represent what often happens in classrooms and what was observed in the two excerpts in this paper. However, it should be noted that it is possible to have other combinations of SG and SD.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yuen Yi Lo

Yuen Yi Lo is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include Medium of Instruction policy, code-switching, CLIL, language across the curriculum and teacher collaboration. She has published her work in Review of Educational Research, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, and Language and Education.

Angel M. Y. Lin

Angel M. Y. Lin received her doctoral degree from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto in 1996. Her research and teaching have focused on critical discourse analysis, critical literacies, bilingual and multilingual education. She has published six research books and over 100 research articles and book chapters, and serves on the editorial boards of leading international research journals. She was a full professor in the Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong before moving in 2018 to Simon Fraser University to take up the position of Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Plurilingual and Intercultural Education.

Yiqi Liu

Yiqi Liu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language Education, The Education University of Hong Kong. Hermain research interests include discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and bilingual education. Her publications have appeared in Discourse and Communication, Language and Education, Chinese Journal of Communication, Assessment andEvaluation in Higher Education and International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism.