Kelly Hall, San Sisto College, BrisbaneImproving speaking confidence: from iPads

to Immersion Week to CLIL

• Catholic girls school, run by Brisbane Catholic Education

• Eastern suburbs of Brisbane• Years 7 -12• Approximately 670 students• Japanese and Italian• Compulsory 2 years of Languages study of either

Japanese or Italian for all of Year 7 and 8 – this began last year (prior to this Languages were on a rotation)

• 2 Japanese teachers, 1 Italian teacher• Small school, so part of the English Department• Japanese teacher as Principal

Improving Confidence in Speaking: How did it become my focus?

• My observations of the students• My own struggles as an L2 learner• A desire to see better outcomes for our girls

Action Research Grants from BCE

2014 - iPads

Purchased 11 iPads, Macbook and syncing cabinet with the intention of using the iPads for filming and reviewing in class speaking tasks

Some money spent on teacher release

Main use of the iPads was on Japan Trip

2015 - CLIL

Researching feasibility of introducing a CLIL program

No technology purchased, almost entire budget is being spent on professional development and teacher release. Money also spent on resourcing an after school program

Focus is still on improving speaking, but also now with the wider goal of improving languages teaching outcomes and pedagogy

Data from Immersion Week• 100% of students reported an improvement in their spoken Japanese

• 100% of students reported an improvement in their overall Japanese abilities

• Before Immersion Week, only 21% of students rated their spoken confidence levels as high. By the end of Immersion Week, this had raised to 43%.

• Before Immersion Week, 29% of students rated their spoken confidence as low. This dropped to 14% by the end of Immersion Week.

• 50% of students reported that their spoken confidence increased by an entire band (eg. Low to some, some to high).

Feedback on using the iPads on the Japan Trip

• 70% of students felt the movie task helped in improving their Japanese. Reasons for this included being forced to use the language and think in advance about what they would say; using the recordings as a way of improving accuracy – students reported that hearing their mistakes was more powerful than reading them

• Challenges: overwhelmingly, lack of time to complete the tasks. Also, some students commented that the tasks were basically reading aloud something they had pre-prepared and therefore did not help with spontaneous language use. They did say though they got this through interacting with Japanese people throughout the week.

• Favourite task for almost every student was interviewing their host sister – gave them an insight into their lives, provided them with something to talk about and will be a great memento of their time together

• Most challenging task was interviewing a Japanese person

What was enjoyable about the movie task?

“That we could reflect on our day through video and speech rather than writing.”

“I enjoyed interviewing my host sister and having the videos to keep with me forever.” “The part I enjoyed most was interviewing the host sister. It gave us something to start a conversation with and gave an insight into their life.”

“It was amusing when you replay it and realise all your mistakes. Good way to learn.”

Did it improve your Japanese?

“Yes, because I could hear my mistakes so I could fix it rather than writing something down and not reading it aloud.”

“Yes, it did because it challenged you to make sentences on the spot about what you were doing.”

“I think that the movie task improved my Japanese because we had to speak the language and think of things to describe where we were or what we would say to the person we were filming. I felt like it was a good way to practise without feeling like we were doing much work.”

Immersion Week Movie Night

• Students, their families and some special guests were invited to see a variety of video presentations from Immersion Week

• The girls dressed up and cooked Japanese curry and asked as MCs for the evening

• Why did we decide to run a CLIL trial at San Sisto? – Motivated Principal and teaching staff looking to

try something new– Brisbane Catholic Education was looking for a

school to give it a go– I had been interested in CLIL but had put it in the

too hard basket

2015 - CLIL

Action Research Grants from BCE

2014 - iPads

Purchased 11 iPads, Macbook and syncing cabinet with the intention of using the iPads for filming and reviewing in class speaking tasks

Some money spent on teacher release

Main use of the iPads was on Japan Trip

2015 - CLIL

Researching feasibility of introducing a CLIL program

No technology purchased, almost entire budget is being spent on professional development and teacher release. Money also spent on resourcing an after school program

Focus is still on improving speaking, but also now with the wider goal of improving languages teaching outcomes and pedagogy

CLIL – A Sampler Approach

• Art and craft lessons (Valentine’s Day, Hanami)

• Year 8 Japanese History Unit – 3 week trial with one class

• After school CLIL program – optional program with native speaking Japanese guest teachers

• Using more target language in class in order to support CLIL activities

• Celebrating festivals such as Tanabata

Valentine’s Day

Art and craft activities

Year 8 Japanese History Unit

After school cooking

After school cooking

After school pottery

Tanabata

Feedback from students

Year 7 and 8 Craft Lesson (first lesson of the year)Did you enjoy the lesson? Why / why not?

• “Yes, because it was fun and active and I learnt a lot of Japanese when she was speaking the language.”

• “Yes, I did, because I liked the challenge of trying to understand.”

• “At the start of the lesson I felt confused. By the end of the lesson I felt like I succeeded. I enjoyed the lesson because I feel like I can learn more by not speaking English.”

Year 8 History Mini Unit• High engagement levels – 85% of the class said they were MORE motivated

about studying Japanese after the CLIL unit

• “I did enjoy the lessons because we learnt about Japanese history in Japanese whist using the language.”

• “It was a pretty hard at the start and about a week I eventually starting to get used to Japanese.”

• “I can't understand what is being said properly which made me lose focus.”

• Despite some students saying they found it too hard, my observations a teacher were that even the weaker students in the class were able to participate meaningfully in the lesson, due to the scaffolded nature of CLIL methodology

After school CLIL

What did you get out of the activity?• “It was a great learning experience, and even though I

struggled to understand it at times, the confusion drives me to keep studying until I do.”

• “I enjoyed how Ken spoke in Japanese so it challenged us to listen and understand. I also enjoyed it when Hiroko would ask us questions which would make us speak in Japanese.”

• “That it was a hands on activity and using a lot of the new language that we recently learnt.”

CLIL Strategies that have worked for us

• Repetition of key words and phrases in different activities, at different times, through different mediums

• “Translanguaging” (Coyle, Hood, Marsh, 2010) It’s OK to use SOME English and code switching is a valid communicative tool in a plurilingual society

• Visuals, graphic organisers

• Simple activities are effective (eg. cloze activities)

• Students previewing vocab

• Talking to students individually

• Using a tool to like Survey Monkey to gain regular feedback from the students

• Careful planning – I’ve never written such detailed lesson plans. You don’t need to follow a script but you do need to get your head around exactly what language you are trying to teach

The good and the bad so far

Benefits• Improved confidence in speaking - my Principal observed my

class and was struck by this • Exposure to the language in context – another teacher who

observed commented that it felt like all of the Japanese words she had learnt in isolation started to make sense

• Increased enjoyment and engagement • Opportunity to enhance understanding of other subject areas • Enhanced academic performance across the board• Raises the profile of Languages within the school • Increased teacher motivation

The good and the bad so farBenefits• Improved confidence in speaking• Increased exposure to the target

language• Exposure to the language in context• Increased enjoyment and

engagement• Opportunity to enhance

understanding of other subject areas

• Enhanced academic performance across the board

• Raises the profile of Languages within the school

• Increased teacher motivation

Challenges• Time required for planning• Obtaining funding to allow enough release

time for planning• Timetabling CLIL in a high school• Meeting the demands of another subject

area’s curriculum• CLIL community in Brisbane is limited so

networking opportunities have been limited

Some things we have discovered so far

• Raise your expectations and the students will meet you there• Start small – just commit to doing one lesson, or one week of lessons to

begin your CLIL journey• You can run a CLIL program without being a native speaker, but having some

native speakers in your community who can help is a great asset to the program

• Planning is time consuming, but if you write one themed lesson you can recycle it across many year levels

• Our focus on speaking has meant in the Junior School we have focussed less on on learning script – we’ll see what the consequences of this are next term

• Even students who have been struggling with Japanese in the younger grades were engaged in the lesson and able to meaningfully participate

• Already entering a period of change with the introduction of ACARA, so CLIL provides a great chance for Australian languages teachers to innovate

Future plans

• Next year, we are implementing a Year 10 Japanese CLIL course– Timetabled offline, 3 sessions per week – Opt-in– In addition to standard Year 10 Japanese– Will teach a variety of content areas– 10 of our forty four students have signed up – The course will be assessed and reported on – Will most likely teach one theme / area of content per

term

Why CLIL?Answer from David Marsh (leading CLIL expert, born in Australia, now based in the UK) from his publication entitled Using Languages To Learn and Learning to Use Languages

“Imagine learning to play a musical instrument such as a piano without being able to touch the keyboard. Consider learning football without the opportunity to kick a ball yourself. To learn how to master a musical instrument, or a football, requires that we gain both knowledge and skill simultaneously. In other words, we learn effectively by experiencing both learning about the instrument, and having hands-on practice at using the instrument, at the same time. This is as true of music and football as of language. In the evening, or at school, a youngster may be given time to practise music by playing the piano, but do you, or your children, have the opportunity to practise playing the language during or after school? If not, then what is learnt in their language lessons may be wasted to some extent. In CLIL, we have an opportunity to try to prevent this from happening by giving opportunities to youngsters to practice what they learn whilst they learn.”

References• Coyle, D., Hood, P. and Marsh, D. (2010) CLIL, Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press• Dale, L. and Tanner, R. (2012) CLIL Activities: A resource for subject and

language teachers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press• Turner, M. (2013) Content-based Japanese Language Teaching in

Australian Schools: Is CLIL a Good Fit?, Japanese Studies, 33:3, 315-330 • Marsh, D. and Lange, G. (eds) (2000) Using Languages to Learn and

Learning to Use Languages, TIE-CLIL, University of Jyvaskyla and Milan: Minestero della Pubblica Instruzione

• Cross, R. and Gearon, M. (2013) Research and Evaluation of the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) Approach to Teaching and Learning Languages in Victorian Schools, Melbourne: Melbourne Graduate School of Education

• Kelly.Hall@bne.catholic.edu.au