Languaging in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) Classrooms: implications for English across the curriculum

Abstract

Language is a primary semiotic (meaning-making) resource in construing the world, and the world (or content) is grasped mainly through language (Halliday, 1993). Hence, it has been argued that successful learning or knowledge construction depends on “guidance through interaction in the context of shared experience” (Rose & Martin, 2012, p. 58), or through the process of languaging, where language is used to mediate formulation of concepts (Swain & Lapkin, 2013). These highlight the importance of ‘dialogue’ or ‘dialogic discourse’. However, what actually constitutes ‘dialogic discourse’ and how this can be achieved by teachers and students in classrooms are still being explored, especially in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) classrooms, where such languaging processes and dialogic discourses take place through students’ (and often teachers’) ...