Canning J. wrote:
> This from the BBC website this morning.
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8380514.stm
>
> I am an ex-geographer working in a languages department. 'Content and Language Integrated Learning' (CLIL) is often seen as something positive by those in modern languages , but I have never heard any response to it from geographers or historians (the main subjects selected for CLIL). I wondered what those teaching geography in universities think? Could this lead to linguistically competent geography undergrads or could this turn pupils off geography and history in schools?
>
> Any thoughts?
> John
>
>
> Dr John Canning
> Senior Academic Coordinator
> Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies
> University of Southampton
> Southampton
> SO17 1BJ
> Tel: +44 (0) 23 8059 4814
> Fax: +44 (0) 23 8059 4815
>
> Follow LLAS on Twitter! http://twitter.com/HEA_LLAS
>
Dear John, dear all,
some of you are probably already familiar with it but in the French
public educational system, such classes of history and geography in
English and other languages already exist for around 15 years.
Students can choose to be part of what we call "the european section",
meaning that in addition to their regular history and geography classes,
they follow classes taught in English or German, Spanish, Italian.
Hiring teachers for this has been the most difficult part I think,
because they have to be both good teachers of social studies and fluent
in the other language.
The French ministry of education has developped a special exam for
social studies teachers willing to be part of this program. I'm one of
these.
I have experienced this system as a student first and then as a teacher.
As a student, it really helped me to use English in situation and as a
teacher I enjoy the multicultural focus that these classes are supposed
to adopt : how was this treaty seen from this or that perspective
(reading press papers for example) ? what does it mean to use the terms
"suburbs" or "banlieue" ? etc. Some of my colleagues organize cultural
exchanges with schools in Europe. I also know that this experience,
related to a similar one in Germany, lead to the redaction and
publication of a Franco-German text book for seniors in world history of
the 20th century.
I don't know if an extensive assessment of this initiative has been lead
so far so I couldn't be more precise in my answer, but if you are
interested, please contact me and I will give you more information and
people involved.
Regards,
Amandine Chapuis
Assistant doctorant Geography
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
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