PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICES ADOPTED BY TEACHERS WHEN TEACHING LEARNERS TAKING ENGLISH AS FIRST ADDITIONAL LANGUAGE IN LIFE SCIENCES CLASSROOMS

This study examined pedagogical practices adopted by teachers when teaching learners taking English as First Additional Language in Life Sciences classrooms. The inquiry adopted a generic qualitative design located within the interpretivist paradigm and involved purposively selected Life Sciences teachers and grade 10 learners from South African township schools as participants. Qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews and classroom observations. The empirical investigation is underpinned by the Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) as the underlying theoretical framework. The study uncovered a myriad of instructional challenges facing Life Sciences teachers and learners associated with the use of English as a medium of instruction while it is taken as a First Additional Language by the learners. In particular, the terminology used in Life Sciences as a key knowledge domain posed fundamental instructional challenges in relation to meaningful development of enhanced learners’ conceptual understanding of scientific phenomena. Theoretical implications for meaningful science teaching and learning are discussed.

Developing Linguistic/Cultural Competence in Heritage Languages

The field of neuropsychology is diversifying its workforce, in part, to access linguistic/cultural resources that can aid in the provision of improved services to our research and clinical populations. Consequently, a growing number of people enter the field with knowledge of a heritage language learned at home. To exploit this resource optimally, the profession needs to incorporate training for clinical competence in the heritage language/culture. Many entering the field have Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) in their heritage language, but not Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency Skills (CALPS) or clinical proficiency. Based on our training experiences, we present a comprehensive, aspirational model of honing clinical competence in the heritage language that includes the following components: Goal settingTraining planAcademic creditMentoringPeer supportEvaluating language needsFormal language instructionInterpreter trainingLanguage Immersion experiencesClinically-directed language learningAccessing in-language professional literature, tests, and other resourcesTraining in basic cultural competenciesLearning about heritage culture academically and clinicallyEasing into in-language clinical experienceSupervisionAttention to language skills during clinical trainingContinuous learning This general model needs to be flexible in its application due to variability in the trainee’s base language skills, available faculty and resources, available clinical and research populations, individual goals, and language-specific characteristics.

Academic Discourse in English Medium Instruction Contexts: A Look at Teacher Explanations

Teaching and learning content subjects through English requires a competence in academic language which Cummins (1984) labeled CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency). Revisiting this concept could shed light on the academic language skills necessary for communication in bilingual classrooms. A first step in this long journey could be a deeper comprehension of the academic linguistic or cognitive discourse functions (Dalton-Puffer, 2013). This paper approaches the function of explaining.To accomplish this aim, six lecturers teaching through English at Escuela de Ingeniería de Informática (Segovia, Spain) were videotaped. Lessons were transcribed to create a corpus. The main research questions followed Dalton-Puffer´s (2007) model for a secondary education context:1. How many occurrences of the academic function of explanation are there in the corpus?2. What is the linguistic form of these explanations?3. Is there any signaling language or metalanguage around them?The seventy explanation fragments found were classified in three categories following Brown´s taxonomy (2006).• Interpretative explanations respond to the question ‘What?’ and are very close to definitions.• Descriptive explanations respond to the question ‘How?’ and centre on processes, structures and procedure.• Reason giving explanations respond to the question ‘Why?’ and provide reasons and causes.The findings show a rich frequency of this academic function in contrast to the very limited comparable previous studies in bilingual classrooms (Dalton-Puffer, 2007). Bar graphs of frequencies and distribution of types per lecturer are presented. Regarding qualitative aspects, the samples found offer insights about how explaining is performed in bilingual content lectures. The form of these explanations and the metalanguage signaling them are analyzed and illustrated with numerous examples from the corpus.Taking as starting point the description of the explanations present in lecturer discourse some reflections about their potential for the learning of content and language are provided. The conclusions section suggests some pedagogical implications for the linguistic education of both students and lecturers in English medium instruction environments.

TEACHING LANGUAGES FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES IN THE CONTEXT OF CONTENT AND LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING

The article looks at the prospects of multilingual education in Ukraine. Upon examination of the number of government initiatives, it becomes clear that higher education of Ukraine is open for innovations that will allow Ukrainian students and graduates participate in academic and professional mobility within the European Community. Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is one of the approaches that have been introduced to meet the needs of rapid internationalization in European universities. Its relevance to teaching languages for specific purposes has been shown by demonstrating the correlation between the main dimensions of this approach and the four components of professional intercultural communicative competence. The main focus is on the methods and techniques that a language teacher should be aware of in order to be able to teach in a language-sensitive way. To achieve this there must be a clear understanding of differences in acquiring basic interpersonal communicative skills and cognitive academic language proficiency. The implications are that the former can be acquired implicitly in the process of active learning, while the latter can be developed only with the use of cognitively demanding tasks. Thus, teacher language awareness requires metacognitive thinking that help teachers plan and teach their lessons efficiently. This research supports the argument that academic skills should be taught by means of scaffolding, an instructional technique of providing individual support that enables learners to build on prior knowledge and internalize new concepts. Therefore, under these conditions, CLIL teachers should certainly opt for explicit instruction and integrate this type of strategies into their classes.

Strategies Used by Lecturers in Teaching English Productive Skills at English Study Program of FKIP UIR

Teaching English productive skills was considered to become the most difficult lesson, the students needed to have good pronunciation, master structure, discourse and the social context of cultural competence. Besides, speaking and writing were difficult, more effort was required on the part of the students and lecturers. It was not enough for the students to listen only. This research tried to explore the strategies used by the lecturers and their influences in developing students’ cognitive academic language proficiency by working on students’ English productive skills. This research was a descriptive qualitative research. It consisted of only one variable, which the researcher wanted to explore the description of strategies used by the lecturers and their influences on students’ English productive skills at English study program of FKIP UIR. In this research, researcher only focused on exploring the strategies used by the lecturers and describing the influences from those strategies on students’ English productive skills. The result of this research showed that there were some strategies used by lecturers in teaching English productive skills at English study program of FKIP UIR, they were: (1) in the speaking classroom; Buzz group, think-pair-share, circle of voices, video recording method. (2) in the Writing classroom; collaborative writing technique. All of those strategies were suitable for teaching speaking or writing and gave description for reader to increase students’ English productive skills.

Languages of schooling in European policymaking: present state and future outcomes

European language policies have unfolded under the umbrella of the Council of Europe and the European Commission over the last past decades. The major goal has been so far to handle autochthonous multilingualism and preserve language diversity. Major developments in this area has been followed by new political and educational targets. The first one is the spread of high levels of cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) across all the student population. High CALP levels imply the acquisition of high order skills triggered by the practice of advanced language structures at school, mostly through language across the curriculum schemes. Secondly, their interests lie in the development of second language instruction competence (SLIC); i.e. the ability to process school content in a variety of languages so that multilingual education does not affect communicative levels only. CALP and SLIC will mark the political goals for language policy in the nearby future and it so happens that languages of schooling provide a framework to operationalize these goals. Following on past research on European multilingual language policies, this paper intends to explore the means to make this language policy happen in schools. The major concepts, innovations and policies discussed will be illustrated with examples from the course of History.