This section describes how the concepts and theoretical framework of CLIL is manifested in the material. As was mentioned earlier, Coyle et al. (2010, 18) suggest that it is important to strengthen the learners’ self-confidence in using the vehicular language at the early stages of CLIL. Since the material was created for fifth grade students, this was one of the most important issues considered in creating the material.
Hence, exercises with a less demanding level of difficulty in terms of language use were created. Also the students were provided with other support to have the courage to use the vehicular language. However, as was suggested earlier, the student material in CLIL classes is often heterogeneous. Furthermore, even in Finland the CLIL programs are various. Thus it was important also to create material that had higher demands as well.
As Marsh (2002, 75) pointed out, there can be fluctuation between students’ vehicular language skills. It is, of course, up to the teacher to recognize the variation between students and their skills. However, taking the variation between students into account, I have also tried to create material that can be used to individualize teaching by making the exercises easily modifiable by making omissions or additions to the material.
However, it is probably impossible to create material that would correspond to every learner’s needs. Thus, this material package can hardly be expected to cover every need that there might be for the different students.
In addition, in the theoretical background different models for CLIL according to the amount of vehicular language use were presented by Coyle et al. (2010, 15-16). The most important model in terms of the current material package was the model of partial instruction through the vehicular language. This is because the school where the material was tested conducted CLIL that could be described to be partial instruction through the vehicular language. However, since the attempt was to create material that could be modified for different needs, also other types of groups should be able to use the exercises. In other words, an important factor that was considered in the creation of the material was the modifiability of the exercises. The purpose was to create material that could be molded into the need of different types of groups and students.
An important aspect of CLIL, of course, that needs to be considered here is the 4Cs framework which included content, communication, culture and cognition (Coyle, Hood and Marsh 2010, 41). Although Coyle et al. (2010, 53) suggest that curricular subjects should not be the only basis for the content aims of material, they were an important factor in deciding the content of the present material. The reason for this is that the purpose of this material was to correspond to the needs of different schools and groups in Finland. Consequently, since the different curricula examined for the present thesis suggested certain content aims for CLIL, they were a useful principle which to base the content aims on. Furthermore, it needs to be remembered that Mehisto et al. (2008, 27) suggested that CLIL can well have basis on curricula.
Culture was somewhat complicated aspect in terms of the current material package although some cultural details were added to the exercises. Thus, the aspect of culture could be understood on a different level in terms of the present thesis. Issues of human biology relate to each human being and for that reason they can be regarded also cross-cultural and thus culture is present in the topic of the material. In addition, the way in which the topic of human biology is presented to the students could also be regarded to depend on culture. In the case of the present thesis the topic is dealt with an open attitude through discussion-based exercises. Thus the package in itself promotes an interactional and student centered view of learning.
Communication was an underlining theme in the current material package. In fact, all of the exercises created were communicational exercises. The themes chosen for the
material package covered issues that the students can experience in their own body and for that reason they could easily relate to the topics and also form discussions on them.
However, of course there were issues that needed to be considered in order to enable the discussion. For example, in order to provide students more proficiency in the vehicular language, practice of some grammatical issues was included in the exercises. However, also other factors needed to be considered in order to create functional material and for that reason the language triptych was taken into account.
The language triptych was a useful tool in the creation process of the material. Taking into account the elements of the language triptych presented by Coyle et al. (2010, 36-38), language anxiety might be hindered as the purpose of considering the triptych is to provide the students the language needed for producing the vehicular language. Thus, firstly the language of learning, i.e. the important concepts and phrases, needed to be presented in the exercises. In other words, exercises were created that introduce key concepts that related to each topic. Otherwise the language demands were not high. The exercises were in most cases also provided with example phrases that the students could use in order to complete them and produce the vehicular language. Of course these helping sentences could also be omitted in case the students’ lingual skills were sufficient without them.
Secondly, the language for learning needed to be considered in the creation of the exercises. Again, sentences that helped the students perform elements of the language for learning were provided to the students. The exercises also were created so that they provide the students opportunities to implement the language for learning, for example group work situations where the students needed to describe, evaluate or draw conclusions.
The language through learning connects to the learning situation so strongly that it was impossible to take it into account in the creation of the type of material package as the present package. The language through learning should be taken into account in the lessons following the session where the language through learning has taken place.
Thus, since the exercises are supposed to be used separately and, therefore, do not necessarily relate to each other, it would be impossible to predict the language learning that happens during the sessions or try to take it into account in the exercises. Thus, it is
left to the teacher to notice situations where language through learning occurs and utilize it in the following sessions.
The final component of the 4Cs frameworks that needs to be considered is the cognition. It was taken into account in all of the exercises as all of them had different cognitive demands. In order to indicate the demands of cognitive skills, the CLIL matrix introduced by Coyle et al. (2010, 43-44) was used. Furthermore, it was not only used in the material package to give the teacher an idea on how demanding each exercise was in terms of cognition but also to indicate how demanding each exercise was in terms of language. Hence, the matrix helps the teacher to recognize the function of the exercises and use them according to the skills of the learners. However, it can only be regarded as directional, as it is impossible to evaluate the true knowledge of groups that are foreign for the creator of the material. The directional evaluation of the cognitive demands was based on Bloom’s taxonomy revised by Anderson and Krathwohl (Coyle et al. 2010, 30), introduced in section 2.2.3. The main parameters used were the lower-order processing and the higher-order processing. The four dimensions of knowledge were taken into account by creating exercises that offered the chance to develop the dimensions. The language demands follow the description presented by Coyle et al.
(2010, 43-44) and explained in section 2.2.4.
As was mentioned earlier, implementing CLIL does not come without problems, one of which is the lack of resources (Lehti, Järvinen and Suomela-Salmi 2006, 310). Thus this material package tries to answer to the need of usable CLIL material and at the same time ease the burden of teachers as all the responsibility of creating material does not fall upon them. Furthermore, as was mentioned, in CLIL it is useful to include goals set in terms of several areas: language, content and learning. Thus, in order for the material to be easily usable the aims of the exercises are separately described.