From “This is impossible” to “I will make the standard higher”: A close look at interaction in the CLIL classroom

Abstract

This paper aims at exploring the complexities of students’ interaction in a collaborative learning task set within a CLIL unit in the EFL classroom. By way of illustration, a sample from a 4th year classroom grade in a secondary school of Catalonia has been collected. The paper examines, through the students’ outcome, the impact of cooperative learning in a content-rich information swap task and discusses the role of content and language integrated learning in the classroom. This paper concludes with several implications for research and practice.

Keywords

• interaction
• language learning
• tasks
• Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)