Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education - Volume 7, Issue 2, 2019

This study is situated in a newly emerging EMI setting in China where an Anglophone high school curriculum is taught by predominantly foreign teachers through English to local Chinese students. These teachers are termed ‘monolingual teachers’ in the sense that they cannot use the students’ L1 as a resource in their teaching should they wish to, as opposed to the typical bilingual teachers commonly explored in the existing EMI literature. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis of 30 video-recorded EMI science lessons taught by 15 monolingual teachers we identified and explored the language-focused-episodes (LFEs) where students’ attention was explicitly diverted from the content plane to the language plane. We found very limited explicit language instruction, with non-technical vocabulary being the main type of LFEs, and only a narrow range of grammatical features being attended to. The implications for this lack of focus on language are discussed in the context of monolingual teachers but also with reference to the potential for bilingual teachers to use both L1 and L2 for LFEs.

In Australia, content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is commonly implemented as a way to encourage innovation in language teaching. This paper explores how Japanese can also be used to innovate the teaching of content. Qualitative data are drawn from a Year 8 science Japanese CLIL classroom in a secondary school with an opt-in CLIL program. In the class, a monolingual (in English) science teacher was co-teaching with a Japanese language teacher. Findings from observations, after-class reflections, teacher and student interviews, a student survey and work samples revealed that students were highly engaged with the Japanese component of their science lessons. Kanji was further positioned as a way for students to deepen their understanding of scientific concepts. However, there also appeared to be a separation in the way both teachers and students spoke about Japanese language use and learning science. Implications of these findings are discussed in the paper.

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.

This article examines teachers’ attempts to enhance students’ content learning in Biology through the use of talk centred on concept sketches. Of specific interest is how teachers provide scaffolding through purposeful classroom discourse (Lemke, 1990) with the use of talk moves (Chapin, O’Connor, & Anderson, 2013), drawing on concept sketches (Johnson & Reynolds, 2005) annotated by students. Informed by socioconstructivist (Vygotsky, 1978/86) perspectives and grounded in multimodal literacy (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001) underpinnings, the study acknowledges the teacher’s role in productive classroom discussions to guide students’ thinking and facilitate meaning-making. Qualitative analysis of classroom discourse illustrates how teachers’ classroom talk can scaffold and address the gaps in students’ learning. Pedagogical implications are discussed.

Drawing on Lemke’s (1990) “thematic patterns” theory, this research proposes a “Concept + Language Mapping” (CLM) approach and tried it out in an English Medium Instruction (EMI) biology classroom in Hong Kong. Lessons were observed and samples of student work were collected during the intervention with student/teacher interviews conducted afterwards. A quasi-experimental design was also adopted to estimate the impact of the CLM approach. The analysis indicated that CLM facilitated the development of both content and language knowledge.

In Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programmes, students learn some non-language content subjects through a second/foreign language (L2), and their content knowledge is often assessed in their L2. It follows that students are likely to face challenges in both cognitive and linguistic aspects in assessments. Yet, there has been limited research exploring whether and how CLIL teachers help their students cope with those challenges. This multi-case study seeks to address this issue by investigating the instructional and assessment practices of two science teachers in Hong Kong secondary schools. The two teachers presented an interesting contrast – one teacher incorporated both implicit and explicit language instruction in her lessons, so her students were well prepared for the assessment tasks; the other teacher’s instructional and assessment practices were heavily content-oriented, and it is not sure whether students mastered both content and L2. These findings illuminate CLIL pedagogy and teacher education.

This commentary to the special issue “Teaching, Learning and Scaffolding in CLIL Science Classrooms” synthesizes the contributions from the authors by addressing two overarching questions. First, what is the role of language in mediating science teaching and learning in a CLIL science classroom? Second, to what extent can content and language be integrated or separated in CLIL instruction and assessment? In addressing the first question, I distil three major perspectives of how the authors conceive the role of language as a scaffolding tool. These roles are: (a) providing the discursive means and structure for classroom interaction to occur, (b) enabling students’ construction of knowledge through cognitive and/or linguistic processes, and (c) providing the semantic relationships for science meaning-making. These three perspectives roughly correspond to the discursive, cognitive-linguistic, and semiotic roles of language respectively. In addition, two other roles – epistemic and affective, though not emphasized in this issue, are also discussed. In addressing the second question, I raise a dilemma concerning the integration of content and language. While there are clear political and theoretical arguments calling for an inseparable integration, there is also a common practice to separate content and language as distinct entities for various pedagogical and analytical purposes. In revolving this conundrum, I suggest a way forward is to consider the differences in the various roles of language (discursive/cognitive/linguistic vs. semiotic/epistemic/affective) or the levels of language involved (lexicogrammar vs. text/genre).