CLIL - what is it?
CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) is a method of teaching a particular subject through a foreign language. It is an innovative method that extends professional knowledge while deepening language competences. This method has spread all over European universities and is recommended for use in higher education by the European Commission. On students’ part, it is learning through action, thanks to which the taught subject matter and acquired language competences are directly applicable in practice and contribute to the development of such soft skills as communication skills, entrepreneurial thinking, problem solving, time management, etc. CLIL also teaches teamwork and develops creativity.
Project stages:
- Establishing contact with the content teacher at the selected faculty of the Silesian University of Technology.
- Setting the task by the content teacher (technical coordinator).
- Arranging dates and contacts with the technical coordinator.
- Collecting source materials and information to complete the task.
- Dividing students into task groups and creating a common Gmail and Google Drive address to which all the developed materials can be uploaded and later evaluated by the teachers.
- Planning individual stages of the project and setting deadlines for their completion.
- Implementing the project by assigning tasks to the teams, selecting materials, organizing and dividing the work, as well as keeping documentation of individual stages of working in teams (reports, posters, notes, photos of key activities).
- Presenting and discussing the results of work stages in teams on the forum of the whole group.
- Completing the project by delivering a presentation about the final product in a foreign language, in the presence of the content and language coordinators, and writing final team reports of the entire project.
CLIL projects can be run for one or two semesters, should the project task require it. In the case of two semesters, the first semester is usually devoted to expanding the theoretical knowledge necessary for the effective task performance in the second semester.
For CLIL projects, we recruit students who would like to join the whole undertaking at the beginning of the semester. They must be at the same level, e.g. C1, in the same year and from the same faculty. To this end, during the first class we organize a meeting during which we present the project and its advantages to all the students, hoping that some of them will be interested in joining it.
