L2 content cross-curricular collaboration: a first glimpse at the effectiveness in teachers’ pedagogy and students’ L2 learning

Abstract

In CLIL, students learn content subjects through a second language (L2), so that they can incidentally learn L2 in authentic and communicative contexts (Snow et al., 1989). To further facilitate students’ L2 learning, it is proposed that apart from providing massive language input, teachers should also incorporate systematic language teaching into their lessons (i.e. focus on form) (Lyster, 2007). As content subject teachers are usually not experts in L2 teaching, they may collaborate with the L2 teachers in their own schools. Hence, Language across the curriculum (LAC) in the form of cross-curricular teacher collaboration has been strongly advocated over the past few decades (Creese, 2005; Davison, 2006). Previous research on cross-curricular collaboration between L2 and content subject teachers mainly focused on how it may take place, yet the effectiveness of such collaborative efforts remains under-explored. This paper reports the preliminary findings of a piloting small-scale LAC project conducted in a Hong Kong secondary school where CLIL was practised. This project involved teachers from English, Integrated Humanities and Science subjects, who taught one Grade 7 class with common theme and language objectives. With data collected from teacher meetings, lesson observations, and students’ performance on the post-test after the LAC trial unit, this project attempted to evaluate the effectiveness of cross-curricular collaborative efforts in content subject teachers’ focus-on-form pedagogy and students’ L2 learning. The findings suggested that the content subject teachers became more aware of L2 teaching in their lessons. Moreover, when comparing the performance of students who were involved in the project with that of students who were not, the former group demonstrated better understanding and usage of the targeted grammatical items in the LAC unit. This project thus reveals the potentials of cross-curricular teacher collaboration and provides important implications for further enhancing the effectiveness of CLIL.