English Teachers’ Conference Bulgaria – CLIL on the rise.
It was the 15TH National Conference of the Bulgarian English Teachers’ Association, www.beta-iatefl.hit.bg, in Bulgaria last week, 13 – 14 May 2006. The weather was glorious and the conference had a large CLIL presence.
The event began with a pre-conference CLIL day on the 12th at the new building of the University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
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Stefka Kitanova welcomes us to pre-conference CLIL day…
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The pre-conference CLIL day began with an open forum discussion on training for CLIL which was attended by colleagues from around Bulgaria, Macedonia and the UK. The focus of the discussion was the apparent lack of formal training offered anywhere for teachers of CLIL, why this is so and what can be done about it. There were also sessions, given by myself and John Clegg, on tasks for teacher education and a discussion on how they should be integrated into training programmes and why, given the overwhelming support and recognition of the need for language support, why they don’t appear in training programmes.
Elena Sentevska from Macedonia gave an overview and needs analysis for CLIL in Macedonia. It’s a huge job colleagues remarked. This is something to watch out for in the future since the aim is to get the Ministry of Education on board in Macedonia with British Council help.
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Getting ready for Chemistry…
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Heavy metals, their benefits and side effects…
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Maria and Elena gave an open lesson in ‘heavy metals’ (Chemistry/English) in the afternoon which was attended by so many people that there were people standing in the room to observe the lesson. The lesson was filmed and the students did a splendid job.
The ‘buddy’ approach to CLIL (EFL and content teacher working together)… |
After the lesson the participants had the opportunity to ask questions of the students who weren’t studying Chemistry in English on a regular basis but expressed great interest in doing so if they could all be like this one!
Saturday, May 13th
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Maria Koeva, conference secretary, mariakoeva_beta@yahoo.co.uk, and BETA president Ellie Boyadjieva, welcomed everyone to the conference and Adrian Tennant opened the conference with a plenary entitled ‘Are you a nice teacher?’
Plovdiv University… |
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After the audience had been nicely warmed up thanks to Adrian, John Clegg (jclegg@lineone.net)
and I delivered a second plenary focusing on the writing of a resource book
for teachers on the language of content subjects. The book in writing was
warmly received by the audience who asked where they could get hold of a
copy. It’s not out yet, but we’ll keep you posted!
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Lida demo… |
Cosmetics class…
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Chemistry teacher trainer and Science
Across the World team member Lida Schoen (amschoen@xs4all.nl)
came all the way from Holland to run a workshop for the English teachers on
cosmetics to exemplify how Science can be used to contextualise language in
wonderful practical ways.
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Teachers, of course, had to present their cosmetics at the reception later that same evening in front of the rest of the conference. Winners were presented with some delicious old Dutch cheese. |
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Sunday, May 14th
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Other colleagues presented on CLIL issues in the programme and I sat in on a couple including Lyubov Dombeva’s interesting presentation on the Solar Schools Forum. Lyubov teaches Biology at the Roerich School in Sofia (http://rschool.hit.bg) and she presented the work of her students who are participating in the programme. As well as news of the wonderful things the students are doing in Science Across the World (www.scienceacross.org), participants were presented with art work, games and other activities Lyubov and her students had carried out. We had a fun and very challenging game of pictionary with Solar Energy terms. Try drawing a picture of ‘Greenhouse Effect’! Interested colleagues can find more information about the Solar Schools Forum through the European Sustainable Energy Education Forum website at www.ssf.ises.org. You can also contact Lyubov directly at dombeva@abv.bg.
Lyubov Dombeva – The Solar Schools Forum…
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The ELT world is adopting the CLIL term. Indeed this conference had two main speakers, Adrian Tennant and David Hill both speaking on this topic from an ELT perspective. John pointed out that outside the ELT world there is a large network of colleagues who are not language practitioners who are working in something called CLIL which should be distinguished from the ELT variety. Some colleagues refer to this as ‘hard’ versus ‘soft’ CLIL. There are shades in between such as the EFL colleagues in the Basque country who are teaching content curricula through English, but generally speaking the differences are clear. Content teachers are guided by the content curriculum first and foremost, language teachers probably are not.
It will be interesting to see how much CLIL grows within the ELT world. It was certainly invigorating to be at a national conference where such a large number of sessions were dedicated to integrating content and language.
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Also time for fun in the mountains at
my house…
…and some monkey business! |
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Will definitely be back next year!
Keith Kelly
Keith Kelly (Language Education
Consultant)
FACTWorld Coordinator (www.factworld.info)
NILE Associate Trainer (www.nile-elt.com)
SAW Consultant (www.scienceacross.org)
Home address: 146 St Leonards Rd, Leicester, LE23BZ, UK
Home tel: 0044 1162700962
Mobile: 0044 778 2356776
email: keithpkelly@yahoo.co.uk
The Forum for Across the Curriculum Teaching - Supporting and Developing Content
and Language Integrated Learning
Download the report in PDF format here.
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