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Research findings
Using CLIL to teach individual students was beneficial in many ways.
Not only did it help students improve their knowledge, but it aided them
in acquiring different non-linguistic skills and taking responsibility over
their own process of learning.
At the beginning of the research, the students had similar interests with respect to topics they wanted to cover – family, friends, home, school and the like. Over time, as they assumed control over their own learning and as they improved their knowledge of the language, their interests stared to differ widely. Those new interests were not their imaginary persons’ interests but their own that they simply ascribed to their imaginary persons. By doing so, they personalized learning and were proud they could express themselves, i.e. that they were now able to talk and write about what made them special and different from their peers. The ‘personal’ topics included: volleyball, ballet, football, cosmetics, film script, etc.
Keeping the diary gave students a chance to contextualize their knowledge owing to which it was better retained. The students themselves would choose topics to be covered in classes and thus followed their own interests. When covering a topic, the students would require from the teacher to provide them with particular pieces of knowledge so as to be able to express their ideas, communicate a message and fulfill the goals they set themselves. Knowledge was not imposed on them, but such situations were created that students had a real need to ask for knowledge to perform a task. At times, in revision classes, it was evident that such obtained knowledge was better retained and, hence, applied as students would do grammar and vocabulary exercises flawlessly due to their improved command of the language.
As different topics were covered, some more formal and demanding than others, students often needed to prepare well for classes – find materials and information from different sources. Therefore, their other skills, such as skimming, scanning, summarizing, retelling, using different registers, etc., were improved, Moreover, they also developed a number of other skills that were not linguistic. The project was devised so as to make students assume responsibility for their own learning in that they were free to direct it and thus pursue their own interest. Moreover, they needed to realize that learning was a process, rather than a sporadic individual activity and that it involves extensive research, planning and preparation, critical thinking, analyzing, synthetizing, etc. As correspondence between the pairs of students was encouraged, they needed to meet deadlines (to respond to their pen-friend’s letter on time), as well as to assume and execute certain roles as part of team work (when creating a brochure of their home town (they worked in pairs and to perform their task in time so
that their partner could do their share of work).
CLIL classes also provided room for introducing extensive reading. It was for certain parts of the project (film script, Novi Sad brochure, etc.) that students needed to do thorough research to gather necessary information. For instance, a student wanted to write a film script was entitled “Four Musketeers”, which called for conducting research into what weapons the musketeers used, what type of clothes they wore, the role of women in that time, etc. The student needed to consult different Internet sites, history books, books of tales, and the like. Most of the resources students used were in English. Furthermore, students’ English school grades improved over time, which boosted their self-esteem and motivated them to learn even more. It was with pride that they would talk about the easiness of performing school tasks, they would also eagerly retell parts of films they could understand without reading subtitles, conversations they had in English outside school and the like.
Gradually, it became quite evident that the students’ level of anxiety waned. Their utterances became longer (from a few words in the beginning to a 3-4 minute utterances towards the end of the school year). Moreover, their spelling improved significantly and they were able to write longer pieces (from an ID in the beginning to a 5-page film script in the end).
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