Article 17: Developing Material for Physical Education Lessons in CLIL

17 - Developing Material for Physical Education Lessons in CLIL

Meike Machunsky 2007

(article)

A seminar paper from the University of Kassel, Germany, bought as an ebook through: 
GRIN Verlag fuer akademische texte.

In brief:
The paper offers: a definition of CLIL; a description of PE methodology and possibilities for CLIL; an outline of general CLIL materials development; and a description of materials development for PE in CLIL.
I have to agree with the author of this paper, PE is ‘more than suitable for CLIL’. The paper has a number of strengths and weaknesses. It’s a great piece for a clear and readable presentation of a technique for getting students reading about specific aspects of sport with a view to incorporating content knowledge into their sports performance, which I think is very innovative.
Disagree that CLIL is about culture, would like to have seen more suggestions for activities which represent the specific CLIL PE methodology the author cries out for.

At length:
The paper proposes four aims: a definition of CLIL; a description of PE methodology and possibilities for CLIL; an outline of general CLIL materials development; and a description of materials development for PE in CLIL.
 
I have to agree with the author of this paper, PE is ‘more than suitable for CLIL’. The paper has a number of strengths and weaknesses. It’s a great piece for a clear and readable presentation of a technique for getting students reading about specific aspects of sport with a view to incorporating content knowledge into their sports performance, which I think is very innovative.
 
Disagree that CLIL is about culture, would like to have seen more suggestions for activities which represent the specific CLIL PE methodology the author cries out for.
  
It carries a lot of enthusiasm for PE as a subject ideal for CLIL, in a European context where it’s not that common
((I’m aware as I write this sentence that there will be readers among you who will be saying ‘What evidence do you have for making that statement?’ and I admit that my statement is based only on PE teachers who have participated in my classes at NILE (over many years) and a particularly large group of PE teachers in northern Italy 2-3 years ago, and a small group of teacher trainers specialising in Sport in Austria this last year)).
 
I have to question the author’s stressing the cultural dimension so much. This is towing the EU policy line, but I don’t feel the paper argues very strongly FOR a cultural dimension to CLIL. It’s the ‘cultural scripts’ which make the CLIL (my paraphrasing). Is it really, I’d always believed that it was the language of the subject, and support and scaffolding for that language which made the CLIL. There are arguments for culture in PE CLIL based on comparions between terms ‘soccer’ and ‘football’ in the worst case, and sports nutrition and techniques in the best. I’ll come back to culture and CLIL in a moment.
 
The other issue I have with the piece is that there isn’t really much of a description of the specific methodology so passionately demanded and argued for in the article (and with which I couldn’t agree more).
 
In terms of culture then, surely a geographical skill is the ability to place an investigation in the ‘other’ cultural context, surely a history skill is the ability to examine ‘influences’ placed upon an interpretation of an event in the past. What about Maths? Yes, at a stretch, we can insert culture there too, but it is a stretch and that my point. CLIL is about the language and the maths, or here PE, culture isn’t generically involved (bear with me, I am playing devil’s advocate here on a background which places culture so strongly in CLIL methodology). Machunksy writes about the ‘target culture’ (p.7) in PE CLIL. Which culture is that? My best man has recently become manager of a volleyball team in Plovdiv, they played in Cyprus just the other day (sadly lost), but the language of communication, though English, can hardly be described as having any one single target culture (actually most international volleyball, though probably English-medium, is anything but representative of any one target culture – and the English whose culture we might be lauding, are surely not the volleyball role models we’d want our future volleyball starts to look up to!!!).
 
Machunsky uses other examples of terminology to argue for more culture in CLIL. Kristallnacht (Reichsprogromnacht) and its English ambivalent Night of (the) Broken Glasses: you can see that these terms for the same thing have totally different associations, which go back to the different history of the culture. The pupils have to be aware of this if they want to communicate in the foreign language like a native speaker. I think this is all part of the ‘stretching’ I mentioned earlier. I don’t think we’re talking specifically about cultural awareness here, we’re talking about history skills (there’s no space here for dealing with ‘talking like the natives’).
 
I appreciate Machunsky’s description of three approaches (pp.10-11) to bilingual education in Germany which (excuse my brevity) are a) immersive (content in language), b) parallel (content and language), and c) integrated (CLIL). Machunsky states that in Germany most bilingual teaching is immersive (again, my paraphrasing) and there is little CLIL. Bravo for shouting for more CLIL and for more collaboration between subject and language teachers (something other colleagues in Germany have appealed for)!
 
I really can’t understand why Machunsky argues for more CALP in CLIL PE (p. 13). Does this really mean that there may be more CALP in CLIL PE than in mother tongue PE????
 
There is one sentence which is very disappointing and that is:
 
‘To boost the vocabulary learning the teacher could create corssword puzzles or something like this as homework.’
 
In a paper which demands a specific methodology for PE in a foreign language (again, bravo for that), it’s a shame that vocabulary learning, and examples of it, is reduced to ‘or something like this’ when (for me) this is precisely what CLIL is all about, specifying what that ‘something’ is. Here, I would have liked the author to be explicit and offer examples of tasks tried and tested in the PE class in English for developing vocabulary. There aren’t any, apart from the worksheets.
 
I liked the ‘stations’ worksheets (pp. 17-25) offered as a prompt group discussion and leading on to action and practice in the sport itself, here volleyball. But having said that, I really can’t understand why this is the only example given as a structure for presenting language in PE in English. Surely of all subjects PE is begging for integration between the action and the language, between the moves and the language, rhythm even and language? (I place the question mark there for more expert colleagues who actually teach PE in English to comment)
 
Finally, I’m going to pick up on this:
 
‘And the content matter subject should never become a place for learning the language but to learn in the language.’
 
I think following this maxim would be close ones eyes to fantastic rich opportunities for teaching language while doing PE in English.