LONCHERA SALUDABLE COMBINACION DE ALIMENTOS ENERGÉTICOS,

The fifth micro-context found in the CLIL classrooms is orienting learning. In this micro-context, the interaction did not focus directly on any content-related knowledge, skills or understanding, or on the performance of any specific instructional task or activity. Rather, the topic-focus was on the organization of the lesson, unit or curriculum itself, with learning listed as topics or activities, without getting into any specific topic or activity. It is in a sense another procedural context, but unlike the task- setting micro-context in that the focus is not on the next upcoming activity and its successful completion, but on aspects of the learning programme, whether at lesson, unit or longer-term level. In the following example, from a third year geography lesson, the teacher announces that today’s topic will be development:

(6.18) GEOGLSN2

T: okay (.) so (.) today (.) 1

today´s work 2

we are going to work 3

with the development development (.) 4

as you can see in topic ↓five 5

everybody has the ↑copies topic five 6

(.)↓development 7

and we are working with trade 8

and aid as elements 9

which are really really influenced 10

influenced in the ( ) ↑okay 11

so today we will be doing a lot of 12

searching of vocabulary 13

and we will be working 14

with the lesson on pages 26- 15

As can be seen in the extract, topics are named or listed in some kind of series

(development is ‘topic five’ - lines 5-6). The aim is to orient students to what they will be doing or to situate learning (sometimes projecting it into the future as in this

example, at other times into the past as in ‘what we’ve done’). Learning is also situated in terms of where it can be found, for example in the unit of a textbook or specific page numbers (as in line 15 in the extract). Activities are broadly characterized as ‘what we’ll be doing’ as in lines 12-13 in which the teacher announces that the class will be doing a lot of vocabulary searching. Unlike the task-setting micro-context, there are no further details of how to do any one specific, next, upcoming task. In her comments on the video vignette which contained this sequence, the teacher clearly identified a pedagogic purpose in line with the interactional organization of the classroom extract:

(6.19) VSC3

I: okay (.) what is happening here (.) 1

what is going on. 2

T: I was trying to introduce the topic (.) trying to 3

make them think and make them - sorry cannot find 4

the word now (.) trying to make them say what they 5

know about it what they understand about 6

development in order to focus the topic 7

and start working with the topic itself. 8

I was trying to take on a few key words 9

to focus the topic (.) 10

so they can think of the main issues in the topic. 11

and also I wanted them to see where that topic was 12

where the material was 13

what information of that topic 14

is in their textbook (.) 15

so this is why I referred to the source they have 16

so they know where to study afterwards. 17

At line 3, the teacher begins her discourse unit with a clear statement of her purposes in the sequence: trying to introduce the topic. Her elicitations of what the students know about the topic are preliminary to starting ‘working on the topic itself’ (line 8). She also states as a purpose picking out some key words that would help them to focus on the ‘main issues’ in the topic (lines 9-11). Her description is one of sketching out the topic in broad outlines, without getting into the specific learning objectives at the levels of knowledge or understanding of specific concepts (like, for example, the factors which indicate development, which were the focus of the main activity in the lesson). A clear indication of the teacher’s orientation to the pedagogic goals of this micro-context

comes at lines 12-17, where the teacher builds a description of her intentions which precisely fits the pedagogic goals of this micro-context as seen in the classroom interaction. This is further evidence that both dimensions of this teacher’s practical knowledge (enactments and constructions of practice) are aligned, in an important sense ‘coming from the same place’. The interactional competence shown in the classroom interaction in talking into being, with the learners, this classroom micro-context, is mirrored by the teacher’s own discursive constructions of her practices and purposes in the video comment interview.

6.4 Chapter summary and conclusion

This chapter has presented the findings on how the four CLIL teachers used language in interaction as a tool for teaching and learning, that is, to achieve both a broad set of pedagogic goals related to the five classroom micro-contexts, and more specific goals related to aspects of the content-topics they were teaching. Five micro-contexts (Direct Instruction, Task-setting, Task-based activity, Task checking and feedback, and

Orienting learning) were broadly described and examples of each from the CLIL classroom interaction in the corpus were presented and analysed. Together with these examples, extracts from the video-clip interviews in which the teachers commented on vignettes from each micro-context were analysed. The analysis shows that the

interactional competence shown by the teachers in establishing and maintaining these ‘communication systems’ to meet their pedagogic goals was reflected in their postactive (re) constructions of practice. Teachers produced descriptions of their actions and their goals and intentions which were congruent with the ways in which they were using language in interaction in the classroom. In doing so, they activated a broad range of aspects of practical knowledge, such as knowledge of curriculum content, knowledge of aims of instruction, knowledge of learners and their epistemic states, knowledge of instructional activities and strategies, and knowledge of self.

The overall conclusion to be drawn from the analyses in this chapter is that the CLIL classroom can be a rich and varied discourse environment, especially when a

teachers worked, to use such an overall approach to learning. This accounts for the fact that the Direct Instruction micro-context accounted for a relatively small proportion of the classroom interaction in the corpus, in comparison with the three task-related micro- contexts. Such an overall constructivist approach to learning meant that, for these teachers, using the L2 in interaction as a tool for achieving a range of pedagogic goals, required the display of a sophisticated classroom interactional competence. This has implications for both CLIL classroom practice and teacher education, and these are discussed in chapter eight. Knowledge of language, as an aspect of the teachers’ practical knowledge, thus emerged in the ways in which they set up and maintained, jointly with the students, L2 communication systems through which they achieved their moment-by-moment pedagogic goals, and this was related to the overall pedagogic ethos of the Bilingual Education Project.

However, there were no clear and unambiguous examples in the corpus of a micro- context in which an aspect of language was the pedagogic focus. In other words, the teachers did not do any sustained direct instruction of language, nor did they set up, monitor, and give feedback on any language activities. Language as an explicit focus of interaction emerged only in specific language-focused practices (LFPs), momentary shifts of attention to some aspect of the L2 such as word meaning or pronunciation, such as the example of ‘breeds’ in extract 6.1, and ‘aisles’ in extract 6.13. These could either be a proactive focus on language, in which the teacher selected some aspect of the L2 for attention, or a reactive focus, as in the two examples from this chapter, in which the teacher responded to the learners’ L2 production. These two approaches to dealing with language are related to the second and third perspectives on language discussed in chapter three, that is, language as a curriculum concern, and language as a matter of competence. The next chapter examines the teachers’ constructions of knowledge of language as a curriculum concern, and their related classroom practices, in which attention is proactively switched to aspects of the L2 while accomplishing the pedagogic goals of the different micro-contexts.

Chapter 7. Language as a curriculum concern in the