Over the last two decades, the second language acquisition field has been influenced by new pedagogical approaches and innovative trends, which have reframed the principles of how foreign languages should be taught. The emergence of the task-based language teaching (TBLT) since the late nineties, and its increasing implementation, transformed it into one of the trendiest pedagogical approaches. Later, the dual-focused vision of the content and language integrated learning (CLIL) approach gained momentum in European countries, and it was included as an essential part of schools' curricula. Nowadays, although CLIL and task-based instruction are well established in educational contexts, the combined use of the two still produces doubts among teachers. In this chapter, a thorough exploration of the main pedagogical constituents of CLIL and TBLT is carried out to analyse their commonalities and set relationships between them. To sum up, this paper will convince bilingual teachers about implementing authentic and meaningful task-based experiences within their CLIL curricula.
TopIntroduction
Over the past two decades, with the advent of globalisation the world has witnessed numerous geographical, socio-economical and sociocultural variations, which have had huge implications on the way people live, communicate, travel and entertain themselves worldwide. Naturally, this big phenomenon has also strongly influenced the educational field implying changes in the way people read, write, study languages, search for information and approach knowledge. Furthermore, new pedagogical approaches and methods emerged so as to adjust the educational processes to the new sociocultural settings. This is the case of the two main approaches that will be dealt with in this chapter: CLIL instruction and Task- Based Learning and Teaching.
Nowadays, educational institutions have to adapt their curricula to the current social needs of the 21st century, in which mastering several languages and acquiring key competences applicable in real world contexts are a necessity. Indeed, educational agents must ensure the provision of an integral formation to turn young FL students into citizens capable to function in a globalised word. For that reason, both CLIL and task-based instruction gained a huge momentum in educational contexts. According to Nunan (2004), the influence of TBLT on educational policy-making and its combination with English teaching made it a keystone of educational centres.
Along the last decades, many experts have studied the pedagogical possibilities of implementing CLIL and TBLT in education, but there are still many lines of study related to them which should be addressed from a broader perspective to provide a deeper insight on both pedagogical approaches. Therefore, in this chapter both learning approaches will be analysed from a practical standpoint in order to provide CLIL educators with a variety of learning strategies, instructional techniques and classroom procedures in relation to task design. The tasks will generate their language and create an opportunity for language acquisition (Krashen, 2015; Lao & Krashen, 2014; Saville-Troike & Barto, 2016).
With regard to the exploration of CLIL instruction and the principles of integrated learning, it is worthy to mention that this research project is based on the 4Cs framework set by Coyle, but especially on the extended analysis of Coyle’s work carried out by Meyer. Meyer claimed that for an effective implementation of CLIL, teachers need to fully comprehend its constituents and embrace its paradigm (Meyer, 2010). Therefore, considering the relevance of making sense of these key aspects for CLIL educators, this study aims to develop an exhaustive discussion of the quality principles established by Meyer from a practical and contextualised standpoint.
Moreover, many investigations of task-based instruction have focused their research of tasks’ features in one-dimensional manner. Hence, this limited vision of TBLT could be mistaken, since for taking full advantage of tasks’ potential it is essential to combine them with other pedagogical approaches. Therefore, this work will look into the benefits of designing tasks in conjunction with other learning perspectives like Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and CLIL.
Last but not least, Meyer stressed the importance integrating the four Cs from Coyle’s framework (content, communication, cognition and culture) within CLIL settings. Meyer’s depiction of these four cornerstones of CLIL instruction is really detailed and instructive (Meyer, 2010). However, he analyses the four Cs in a theoretical and isolated way. Hence, it would be helpful to establish connections between the four Cs and illustrate these relationships within contextualised examples. Moreover, it is advisable to describe the implementation of these four variables in task-based experiences, since setting connections between diverse topics and disciplines is more achievable within sequences of tasks
When it comes to the object of this paper, it should be noted first that it is the result of a thorough investigation on the existing literature related to CLIL features and all the pedagogical aspects related to task-based instruction. Considering that both educational approaches have similar natures and share numerous principles, one of the main targets of this research paper is to examine all these common points. Furthermore, a deep analysis of the educational potential of combining both approaches will be carried out, so as to identify the benefits, but also the limitations of implementing a task-based instruction within the bilingual field.