Elizabeth Durán Llanos CLIL Approach

Exploring  fourth grade students’ communicative competence through the implementation of a Content and Language Integrated Learning Approach

Authors

Elizabeth Durán Llanos 20072165044

Jorge Andrés Molano 20072165042

Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas

Licenciatura en Educación Básica con énfasis en inglés

Bogota 2012

Introduction

When carrying out the work of educating people as human beings, our responsibility as teachers lies on two main actions. The first one is to be aware of any kind of problematic situation that surround us, whether they are related to social, economical, cultural or environmental nature and take this into schools as situations that need to be analyzed and look for being solved. Second, the search of a methodology that permits taking this into the classrooms and also is adequate to work with the students and arouse their interest towards these kinds of issues. This project is about the implementation of a Content and Language Integrated Learning Approach (CLIL) in  a fourth grade classroom of a Public School in Bogotá, in order to bring ecological values into the classroom and analyze how this influences students’ communicative competence in English as a foreign language (EFL) . 

As being involved in the educational process and being aware of the responsibility as teachers, the motivation we have to do this project arose from the observation done during the experience in the Schools that led to highlight the need of offering to the students meaningful content inside the EFL classroom for them to use the language through a real topic instead of just learning isolated vocabulary, this, together with the concern for the use of innovative methodologies and activities that fits in their needs respect of the learning of the foreign language and to be educated as human beings that work from their classroom analyzing real problems.

This work is composed by four chapters that show the process followed until the moment in this research proposal, these chapters are namely: Justification, which explains the importance that doing this project has as well as its impact on the participants, the setting and the field of inquiry. The problem statement describes the specific situation lived inside the classroom that led to propose the pedagogical intervention, also the research question and research objectives. The literature review discusses the constructs of the research question. The research design presents the description of the context and the participants, approach and type of study as well as the data collection instruments. Finally, the instructional design presents the three theories that underlie the research, and their articulation, and the instructional objectives.

Justification

Having stated the importance that has the process of educating students as human beings, concerned about the problematic situations that emerge around them, we want to insist in the important role that implementing an approach focused on values in the EFL classroom plays in order to get students’ interest towards the foreign language as well as for the environment.

The importance that this project has for us as teacher-researchers is represented in the opportunity that we have to propose a project in which the intervention in a School context is based on what we believe is the calling of education. As our area is teaching English as a foreign language, we consider, that finding a way to teach English and also presenting to the students a different way to do it from what they are accustomed to, represents a way to get their interest towards the English language, and also a way to bring to them an important issue as it is the care for the environment. In this way, the importance that we want to highlight concerning to this proposal, is that we present an alternative to learn English through the use of real content for the students, that is current and pertinent according to the necessity that we have to educate human beings that feel like taking care of our environmental problematic.

The research question that we propose attempts to find out how implementing a CLIL approach focused on environmental values inside the EFL classroom can influence fourth grade students’ communicative competence in the English language. The way in which we expect to give an answer to this question, is through the observation of the students when developing the different activities that are going to be done in the classroom, according to the approach and the content selected, which is environmental values; activities that involve interaction in order for them to use the language as a communicative means.

Finally, carrying out this project can represent a contribution to the different actors involved in it; we have asserted previously the importance that doing this project represents for us as teacher-researchers, but we have considered also the impact that it can have in the participants and in our community, as well as in the educational field. Talking about the participants, we consider that bringing real content for the students in the English class can engage them in the English class itself, learning the language and also engage them in the care of their environment as active participants. For our community, it represents a contribution in the way that children start to be aware of a problematic situation that affects the entire community, once children do this, they can share this awareness with the rest of the members of their community. And relating to the educational field, this can be taken as an option to teach English in a different way, taking topics that are brought from reality but in a way that can be useful for the English classes.

Problem statement

This research directs towards the topic mentioned previously because during the classes in the School we could observe some evident situations that called our attention and led to think about this pedagogical intervention. In the first place, we want to set the importance that has the role of the teacher inside the classroom, the teacher has the responsibility of guiding his/actions in order to be a model for the students, and he/she also has the advantage of using his/her class in order to favor students’ development.

During our experience we could observe that most of the students like the English language. They like English because the language itself is something new and different for them, but something concerning about the process of learning English, is the distant relation that students seem to have with it in order to use it as a means to communicate; they know some vocabulary but in an isolated way, and at the moment of using the language, difficulties arise because they seem to lack the knowledge of the way in which the vocabulary that they know can be placed in sentences that communicate something. We did different activities that involved simple communicative acts, and as a needs analysis we decided to do a questionnaire, in which we asked students if they knew how to use the English language in order to communicate expressions that are related to basic functions of language, like greetings, expressing feelings or asking for something; and the answers from the students who responded was no. We asked also about the kind of activities that they usually do in the English class, and the responses included mostly activities related to writing, repeating, drawing and coloring, but no one related to communicative interaction.

In this way, once we identified this problem we decided to propose the following question and objectives to guide the research study:  

Research question

How can the implementation of a Content and Language Integrated Approach (CLIL) focused in environmental values influence students’ communicative competence in English as a foreign language (EFL)?

Research objectives 

General objective:

To observe and describe how implementing a CLIL Approach focused on environmental values in the English class influence the communicative competence of students in the foreign language.

Specific objective:

To analyze how students use the English language when learning about a specific content non-related to the language itself.   

To find out if using a CLIL approach has any effectiveness in the communicative aspect of learning English as foreign language.

Literature review

The purpose of this proposal is to observe and describe how implementing a Content and Language Integrated Learning Approach (CLIL) focused on environmental values in a fourth grade classroom can influence the communicative development of the students. The main concepts that compose this project are Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) Approach, which is the approach taken as guide to design the classes and the activities. CLIL Approach’s theoretical components have been taken from its main representatives and founders Anne Maljers and David Marsh, who are specialist of this approach. One of the main characteristics of the CLIL approach is its focus on the use of a foreign language, that is, a communicative focus to the language. This relationship is taken into account in order to state the second construct that underlines this research proposal, which is communicative competence. Finally as CLIL Approach involves communication and content different from the language itself, the content selected to be the used as tool in this research proposal is also the third construct, environmental values.

Content and Language Integrated Learning

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is an approach that involves learning subjects such as history, geography or other through and additional language (Marsh 1994). Since this approach was presented, it has gained world-wide attention due to its successful practices in different countries of Europe and some of America. The idea of using an approach that involves learning a subject through a target language has shown to be effective as it has been implemented in different European countries. The special attention that CLIL receives around the world is worth to be taken into account and analyzed regarding the benefits that have given then such success as well as the lacks that it may present. Next, some studies and papers related to CLIL and its use are discussed as a way to provide a broader understanding.

Huttner and Rieder (2007) examined through a study the effects of CLIL instruction in a specific aspect of language competence, which is the narrative competence that was referred to the participants’ competence to tell a picture story in the foreign language, English. They found, first, that CLIL instruction influenced students’ in making them more competent in features of narrative competence related to tense consistency and the use of correct verb forms. Second, the features related to a thematic understanding of the narrative competence was in some part influenced by CLIL, but they concluded that this feature is governed mainly by general cognitive skills that mature independently of the input in the foreign language. But these findings did indicate an advantage of the CLIL instruction.

This shows the effectiveness that CLIL offers when addressing a specific aspect of learning a foreign language, special attention must be placed on the actors who are involved in the implementation of a CLIL approach and the objectives must be defined in order to be aware of the advantages or the way in which the approach is working for the students and for the teacher. The study presented previously attempted to examine the development of the narrative competence in children by implementing CLIL instruction. One the findings highlighted the aspect of age influencing one part of the narrative competence, in this way, age seems to be an important variable to be considered when using CLIL. The following study took into consideration the factor of age when conducting it. 

Celaya and Zarobe (2010) carried out a study in which they analyzed the relationships that exists between the type of exposure, this means being in a CLIL and non-CLIL context, the age of the students and the influence of their first language when learning a foreign language. The focus was on the use of borrowings and lexical inventions. The main conclusions were, first that there seems to be a clear effect of the “type of programme and the production of borrowings which implies a direct reliance on the first language” and a poor command of the foreign language vocabulary. Second, the production of lexical inventions seems to be influenced by the age which implies the opposite, less use of the first language and a higher use of the foreign language.

When specific aspects like age, influence of the first language, type of exposure to the target language and the relationship that these aspects keep among each other, there is a clearer view that permits to the teachers and researchers to be aware of the benefits and lacks that CLIL approach may present. Meyer (2010) highlights and acknowledges the momentum that CLIL is gaining as being implemented successfully in Europe but he also reminds that there still exist lacks of “appropriate teaching materials” and suggests that a comprehensive and integrative CLIL methodology needs yet to be developed. The need of a more integrative methodology is also addressed by Casal (2008) who claims that CLIL environment fosters the comprehensive skills (listening and reading), the productive skills (speaking and writing) are not developed because of the lack of chances to do it.

In the same way they bring to light the lacks of CLIL, they address this problem by stating the importance that quality criteria and methodologies that include innovative material and a space of opportunities for students to learn and use the language is given. Then, a holistic methodology is needed in order to go beyond a simple dualism of content and language. 

Communicative competence

We have talked about an approach that explains the methodology we are going to develop in the research. Now, concerning to the “what” we are going to research, it is important to enunciate, first, what communication means. According to Robert Craig (1999) communication can be conceived as a theory in seven “traditions of understanding communication”. Those are: Rhetorical, semiotic, Phenomenological, cybernetic, Socio-psychological, Socio-cultural and critical. In our research, we focus our attention in just five of these seven conceptions.

Communication is the mediation by signs (Semiotic), the experience of dialogue with others (phenomenological), the flow of information (cybernetic), the interaction of individuals (Socio-psychological), and the production and reproduction of the social order (Socio-cultural)(Craig, 1999). Thence communication is also an important part inside any teaching process, regarding to the conception as the most basic requirement for the living entities existence. In fact, “living is to communicate” in a sense.

There are different kinds of communication for example the non-verbal, the oral, the visual, etc. but in all of these cases, communication is helped by a well-structured symbols system called language. According to Halliday (1994), Language is a social product. It serves as a means of communication between human beings living in societies.

There can be social man without language and vice versa, for Halliday (1994) the whole practice of education focuses on a thorough understanding of the nature between language and society, which appears in all research fields. Each individual is part of a social group and they used the language in a variety of situations and for various objectives. 

The development of language is a sequential process is built by so many factors, such as people interaction inside a learning-teaching process in schools. There, it is evidenced how communicative skills are developed during the educational process in schools. For example, with children, we can notice how students follow determined stereotypes through the interaction, the production or reproduction of some ideologies with which they have contact to. Ideologies understood as a basic system of social cognition, conformed by mental representations shared and specific to a group and which enrolls inside general beliefs of whole societies or cultures (Dijk, 1998).

Considering this, we can notice how the development of communication plays an important role inside several aspects of any individual. And at this instance it is necessary to talk about competence and performance. Competence is knowledge that a person has of the language and performance is the use of that language (McArthur, 1998).

At this point, we can enunciate the main construct for this literature review, and it is the communicative competence theory. This theory was firstly enunciated by Robert Hymes in 1988 in his work “On communicative competence”, contrasting with the previous “Linguistic competence” theory postulated by Noam Chomsky in 1966. Chomsky, quoted by Hymes, explains the linguistic competence that “it is concerned with an ideal speaker/listener in a completely homogeneous speech community who knows language perfectly and is not affected by factors such as memory limitations or distractions”.

While Hymes contrasts this theory with what is called communicative competence as he postulates on his book (Hymes, 1988):

“… communicative competence is seen as an aspect of what from another angle may be called the ethnography of symbolic forms – the study of the variety of genres, narration, danec, drama, song, instrumental music, visual art, that interrelate with speech in the communicative life of a society, and in terms of which the relative importance and meaning of speech and language must be assessed… This competence, moreover, is integral with attitudes, values and motivations concerning language, its features and uses, and integral with competence for, and attitudes toward, the interrelation of language with the other codes for communicative conduct”

Hymes suggested a theory that goes beyond Chomsky’s theory in the fact that Chomsky just consider the grammatical competence (sentence level grammar),   or even a discourse competence (the procedure of linking utterances to form a meaningful whole), but not a socio-cultural-linguistic competence (how the language is used to understand a social and cultural context),nor a strategic competence (how are the strategies of employing for a language user in order to interpret, express, and negotiate meaning in a given context) (Hymes, 1988).

Now, the introduction of this concept, contextualized into the English Language Teaching (ELT) process, was arisen from a grammar-based pedagogy to Communicative Language Teaching. It was controversial to support how a communicative context (interactional, socio-cultural, socio-psychological, etc.) could be more important than grammar rules to make reference to a competence concept of the language. Language teaching needed to take account of social context and social rules of use. The concept of communicative competence, initially developed for ethnographic research, appeared to offer an intellectual basis for pedagogic broadening, as Hymes’ statements explain (Leung, 2005).

The importance and the interest to set forth the Communicative Competence theory is to show up that children could convey what they want to express in a close context for them during the English Second Language Learning Process (ESL), if they develop their ESL communicative skills in their competencies more than in their performance, into a socio-cultural context to accomplish communication goals. It could be achieved through the ability to use the language correctly and appropriately (communicative competence), to release a language learning process outcome, which is not just based on the ability of using the language merely as a native speaker, but this outcome is the ability to communicate competently (Leung, 2005).

Now, to make evidence some communicative goals that communication needs to develop its four competences (grammatical competence, socio-cultural-linguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence), we quote Lyle Bachman’s communicative goals (1990):

“Communicative goals consist of (1) an actional element, associated with speech acts; (2) a modal element, associated with the role relationship holding between the interactants; and (3) a propositional element, associated with the content of the communicative event”

In that way, we can implement an instructional design to develop some of the four communicative competences reliability, because based on that goals we take into consideration the words or phrases, even sentences (linguistic competence-actional element); how this fit into a specific setting or topic expressing a specific attitude, such as friendliness, respect, etc. (sociolinguistic competence-modal element); if it is possible, how this context allows children to create an appropriate short conversation in English (discourse competence-propositional element); and finally, to arise strategies for the correct use of language at the moment of expressing ideas (strategic competence-propositional element).

Finally, communication is not only the way in which we convey or express ourselves with the world, in an educational context, it also involves the context and the reaction that learning process produce, reaction that in this case is strongly related with values because these exists to maintain a balance in a society, as it is going to be supported on the followings passages. 

Values

Values are a whole term which has been built up for many academic people to prove the importance of this field inside any kind of society. It is to keep like a balance, according to the human rights, between lifestyles and ways of life and the interaction between human beings, and also values are beliefs which lead the way as we behave and which is socially accepted (Vásquez, 1999). Values determined moral norms, it means that values establish like a model of acceptable behavior in a society, and to ensure that model to be observed by the members of that society, there is issued rules which governs the individual behavior inside the society. So, values are the way as human beings behave, also are their customs and how both are accepted or preferred by the society.

We can notice some characteristics about values, which are determined by what is objective or subjective to us, and related to the way as each person behaves, so, there is a hierarchy, which is the basis for so many researchers who are analyzing this issue about values, to determine those characteristics and to identify the kind of behavior an individual has, according to the existing values divided as the following (Marin Ibáñez, 1976; Scheler, 1941):

Pleasant and unpleasant values 

Vital values (physical education and/or health education)

Ecological values(Harmony with nature, “what the Earth supplies is limited)

Spiritual or transcendent values (what is beautiful or ugly, what is right or wrong, values about the pure truth knowledge); or religious values (the holy and the profane) 

Objective and subjective values 

Moral values (social and individual)

Terminal values (it is referred to desirable states of existence, such as peace, freedom, happiness, common good, etc)

Aesthetic values (literary, musical, pictorial), etc.

We focus our attention on ecological values to engage and motivate students in raising the communicative competence they are developing in the ESL learning process.

We advocate the concept of “Deep ecology”, which started a movement around the world in the care of the World and awoke a consciousness related to environmental values. 

This concept was coined by Arne Naess in 1973, in which states that "the right of all forms [of life] to live is a universal right which cannot be quantified. No single species of living being has more of this particular right to live and unfold than any other species." He holds, as environmentalist also do, that the preservation of the integrity, stability and beauty of the environment depends on how the ecosystems can support a limited change made by human (economic activities) or other external influences. This preservation between human beings and Mother Earth creates an equitable, bearable, viable and sustainable world in environmental, social and economic aspects.

This is a topic that has been on the headings during the last decade. In T.V. programs (such as Futurama), News, movies, even it has been an important proposal for political parties (such as Partido Verde, in Bogota). So, we are in constantly contact related to environmental issues, also in schools we can find recycling campaigns or taking care animals campaigns. And it is an useful tool for children to arise not just their communicative competences, but also their innate love carefulness for Earth and animals.

Now, what is important to educational and this proposal field is the way as we lead Ecological/Environmental Values (EV) inside the ELT classrooms. To observe and to listen to the rights reflect over their rights and responsibilities, we can see the importance of incorporating those values inside the classrooms because we all could learn the value of dialogue, tolerance, respect, acceptance of differences and responsibility for the Earth.

Also through the teaching of EV, we can be able to modify inappropriate behaviors by teaching to “love yourself”, to love others, to love the city, care for it and respect it, to have a sense of belonging and community spirit. The promise now is for our children, through these messages, to form the basis of values through which they can achieve a better environment, a better city, a better future and above all A BETTER CHILDHOOD (Eizabeth Karpf, 2003). Although, we all know how can affect values in the children personality development as individuals in a society, we cannot obey them to belong to x or y community inside that society, nor force the process of fitting in some environment create by us, as teachers or parents, we always need to keep in mind that we are guides to teach them the importance of values and also to show what is happening inside the community and if there is something wrong they need to deduce by themselves.

Taking into account a constructivist perspective about teaching as a critical activity that understands teachers as autonomous professionals who research reflecting about their practices (Sanhueza Moraga, 2000), if English teachers constantly give messages to students, during their lessons, about the importance of some moral and ethical values or norms, and also when teachers give messages to reinforce students’ self-esteem, students will create like an archetype on their behavior to solve themselves some problems about their discipline, their responsibility with the education they have, their behavior with people and, with this, they could improve they communicative skills not just in their mother tongue, but in a Second language learning process.

Teacher has a set of values that determines how s/he handles the various situations which occur in the classroom, and based on the premise that it is impossible to teach without values, Bill Johnston (2003) argues that "it is only by confronting the moral complexity and ambiguity of our teaching that we can hope to identify the good and right things to do in any given set of circumstances, that is, to know the right way to teach." Evidently, there is an important thing to take into account, and that is our capacity to understand our students as an observer and as a participant, always differencing the subjective and objective issues we are taking part in, to analyze the different roles that values and anti-values play inside the classrooms and the interaction it engages with the second language learning process. 

Here, we deal with another important aspect in the interaction of teaching EV and teachers. It is English language teacher's identity; first, in how is the relation teacher-student, it means how teacher will face the moral dilemma of how much to become involved in students' lives (because we all know that some links with students are inevitable, but much of the teacher-student relationship is based on moral choices) and also how determine create the “image” of authority and respect as the teacher; second, the role with which teacher plays in professional way (how teachers accept themselves, as other professional of the society); and the place of religious beliefs or the ideologies we could find in the classroom(Johnston, 2003)..

Finally, we can notice how easily language teachers convey their ideologies through their lessons, as Wong & Canagarajah (2009) suggest that some language teachers attempt to change student and perhaps collective values through language teaching, towards values associated with particular forms of Christianity. But, it is not just about a spreading Christian values, or any kind of values which are based on teachers’ ideologies, it is about what students have been interested for and in what they generate interest from education in a way to find out new cultures, beliefs and an answer to “what can I do for The Earth?””, all this by motivating them through EV. 

So, teachers have had to analyze their expectations about their students, classroom rules, values in the textbook, cross-cultural issues between both cultures: teachers’ and students’, choosing which variety of English will be taught and the teacher's role as agent of the school or other institution versus the teacher to the students, determining the students’ ideologies to take advantage of it and so, to implement new methodologies to get them and to encourage them with educational processes. But those decisions must be made based on something important that relies on how is the interaction with each individual context or situation, and to achieve that, there is like a “tool” for teachers to attain it, and also to understand the interaction previously mentioned, and that is: VALUES.

Research design

This research design portrays the methodology that underlies and will guide the research proposal presented in this work, in order to observe and describe how the implementation of a CLIL Approach focused on values can influence the communicative development of fourth graders. It includes the research question and objectives, the approach and type of study, a description of the context and the participants and finally the instruments selected to collect the data.

Research question:

How can the implementation of a Content and Language Integrated Approach focused on environmental values (CLIL) influence students’ communicative competence in English as a foreign language (EFL)?

Research objectives:

General objective:

To observe and describe how implementing a CLIL approach focused on environmental values in the English class influence the communicative competence of students in the foreign language.

Specific objectives:

To analyze how students use the English language when learning about a specific content non-related to the language itself.   

To find out if using a CLIL approach has any effectiveness in learning English as foreign language.

The approach to this study is the qualitative approach that fits with the purpose and the objectives.

The research question's nature leads a researcher to choose a qualitative method such as a case study approach (Mertens, 1998).  In order to explore and understand how EFL fourth-grade students’ communicative competence is developed in the implementation of a CLIL approach based on Ecological Values; we aim at conducting a qualitative case study. Gillham (2000) defines case study as: “a unit of human activity embedded in the real world; which can only be studied or understood in context; which exists in the here and now; that merges in with its context so that precise boundaries are difficult to draw.”

The analysis of communicative competence development in EFL classroom is well-suited for a case study because it involves detailed investigation of phenomena (such as sociolinguistic competence) where the aim is to understand how behavior and/or processes (speech) are influenced by the context (EFL ecological values workshops in the classroom), and where context is deliberately part of the design (Hartley, 2004).

A descriptive case study approach (Yin, 2003) offers the opportunity to show students’ communicative competences development in a specific context in which it is produced, the EFL classroom.  

Context

The School that will serve as context of this project is a public School in Bogotá located in Engativá locality that offer basic and middle education in two different shifts which are the morning and the afternoon shift. It is located between Carrera 92 and Calle 89, and it is surrounded by buildings which are mostly housings and apartments, stationery shops that some of the teachers of the school use in order to leave class reading material to their students. The environment of the School is generally noisy as it is placed near of one important avenue which is highly passable and many different kinds of vehicles travel on it. 

The school is a small building that counts on two floors that are separated from the outside for a high wall; there is one entrance door for all the personal of the School and which is guarded by the male and female guards in different shifts. There are classrooms, one library, one audiovisual room, one assembly hall, one cafeteria, two restrooms for the use of the students, one room to practice dancing, one janitors’ room and one small room used by the guarding personal; there are also rooms that serve as administrative spaces. There are two yards with a stand where the students do different activities.

 During the school journey, aside from the students and the teachers, the persons working in the school are the administrative staff, the guards and the persons in charge of the cleaning and maintenance of the place. At the beginning of the afternoon shift, the students come to the school and wait in front of their respective classroom until it is clean to start the class and then enter the room.  As soon as they enter, they start organizing the chairs and tables in lines. Once a class finishes, the students usually leave the classroom for a few minutes and wait for their next teacher.  In the classroom including children, it is usual that the teacher in charge wait for the next teacher inside the classroom. The most common activities that students do when they are not in the classrooms are related to talking and playing in the yards, especially the youngest students. The activities done by the teachers include talking in the recess time and going to the cafeteria.

Every classroom in the School holds between 24 and 40 students, the classroom assigned to the course selected for this research proposal is 401 that is composed by 23 students that receive the English classes on Wednesdays and Thursdays. The classroom has plenty of space as the course is small and in this way, they are distributed in four lines in front of the board which is in opposite place to the door. Each student has his/her own chair and table where they place their working implements. The classroom has windows on its side and also lamps in the roof, so there is enough illumination. There is one calendar next to the board and I could not observe the educative materials that they have in the room.

Participants

The course 401 is composed by 23 students that are between 8 and 11 years old. Their school shift starts at 12:30 in the afternoon and ends at 6:30. The space of the class we have with them is given on Thursdays from 12:30 to 2:10, time at which they may use the restrooms and come back to the classroom to receive their refreshment. As we have observed from the activities done in the class the most common tendencies of students are related to playing games in which they are very active, watching cartoons on television and listening to music, reasons that help to establish also the learning styles that are dominant inside this classroom, students response actively to visual and audiovisual stimulus in order to learn the language, they learn by experiencing the language and watching it in context, as in a song, short readings or associating it with images. 

This observations and analysis of their learning styles are explained by the cognitive development stage to which these subjects belong to, that according to Piaget (1980) is the concrete operations, in which children start to accumulate physical experience and this let them to think abstractly in order to conceptualize and create logical structures to explain their physical experiences. According to that, the subjects from this study are starting to create abstract thinking in a formal way in order for them to explain what they feel or see. This is helpful as it can be used in learning English as foreign language in order to start getting simple concepts in the English language that make students able to express their reality in simple sentences.

Instruments

As this proposal has as guide a qualitative approach to research, according to the objectives stated, three instruments have been selected to gather qualitative data that permit to observe and then describe how the implementation of CLIL approach in the English class can influence students’ communicative development.

The first instrument is teacher’s field notes that are descriptions and accounts of the events in the research context (Burns 1999), and as they focus on answering questions related to these events, the type of information that I expect to gather form this instrument is a descriptive information of each one of the activities and students’ behaviors related to their communicative competence as they take place inside the classroom. Answering the question “what” describes the activity that takes place and the different events that arise in that activity, “who”, can take an account of the students participating as well as describing “when” and “how” they are doing it. This instrument is going to be applied during the whole process as it is needed to register the teachers’ descriptions of the events.

The second instrument is audio recording, as the purpose is to observe students’ communicative competence, during the research process different activities that involve communicative acts and interactions must take place. This technique helps in order to capture in detail naturalistic interactions (Burns1999) and it is going to be focus on students’ use of the English language. This instrument is going to be used any time that an activity that involves communication takes place. 

The third instrument selected is interviews that can give me information related to the use and effectiveness that the approach being used can or cannot have. As implementing a CLIL approach changes the methodology of the classes this means that it does not assure from the beginning that this is going to have a complete positive effect in the foreign language learning. A way that can be useful to be aware of this is counting on an interview that makes possible for me to follow up students’ ideas and insights related to the implementation of the approach and the different methodology. The type of interview to be used is a structured one.

References

Bachman, L. (1990). Fundamental considerations in language testing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bell, Judith (2005). Doing your research project: A guide for first-time researchers in education and social science. Open University Press.

Bostock, S. J., Bailey, P. and Smith, J. (2003) Values in the ELT programmes - their role and assessment. SEDA Conference, Birmingham November

Burns, Anne (1999). Collaborative Action Research for English Language Teachers, chapter four: Observational techniques for collecting action research data. Cambridge University Press.

Casal, Sonia. (2008). Cooperative learning in CLIL contexts: ways to improve students' competences in the foreign language classroom. IAIE CONFERENCE: Cooperative Learning in Multicultural Societies: Critical reflections. Turin (Italy).

Celaya, Maria Luz; Zarobe, Yolanda (2010). First languages and age in CLIL and non-CLIL contexts. Spain. International CLIL Research Journal, 1.

  Coyle, Do; Hood, Philip; Marsh, David (2010). CLIL Content and Language Integrated Learning. Cambridge University Press. 

Craig, Robert T. (1999). "Communication Theory as a Field" Communication Theory. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.; International Communication Association

Frondizi, R. (1966) ¿Qué son los valores? Introducción a la axiología. México D.F. Fondo de cultura Económica.

Halliday, M. (1994). 3 Language as Social Semiotic. Language and literacy in social practice: a reader

Huttner, Julia; Rieder-Buneman, Angelica (2007). The effect of CLIL instruction on Children’s narrative competence. Vienna. Vienna English working papers, 16, 20-27

Hymes, D. 1988. Communicative competence. In U. Ammon, N. Dittmar and K. J. Matthier (Eds.), Sociolinguistics (pp. 219-229). Berlin de Gruyter

Johnston, B. (2009) Values in English Language Teaching. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers

Leung, C. (2005). Convival Communication: re contextualizing communicative competence. International Journal of Applied Linguistics.

Meyer, Oliver (2010). Towards quality CLIL: successful planning and teaching strategies. Germany

Næss, Arne (1973) 'The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement.' Inquiry 16: 95-100

Saussure, F. (1983) Curso de lingüística general, Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1983

Vásquez, E. (1999). Reflexiones sobre el valor (I). Suplemento Cultural de Últimas Noticias, (1.606), 1-3

Werner, E., "Cooperating Agents: A Unified Theory of Communication and Social Structure", Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 2, L. Gasser and M. Huhns, eds., Morgan Kaufmann and Pitman Press, 1989.