“OUR NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES”: RAISING MULTICULTURAL AWARENESS THROUGH A CLIL PROJECT FOR YOUNG LEARNERS

“OUR NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES”: RAISING MULTICULTURAL AWARENESS THROUGH A CLIL PROJECT FOR YOUNG LEARNERS

Griva, Eleni
Chostelidou, Dora
Semoglou, Klio

This paper presents a CLIL project, which was designed and piloted for 18 weeks with 6th grade students of an experimental primary school, in northern Greece, aiming to interweave language and content learning. The objectives of the project were to: a) develop the students’ skills in EFL, b) develop their multicultural awareness c) enhance their knowledge in aspects of cultures of neighbouring countries and corresponding aspects of Geography. Stories were at the ‘core’ of the project, since they are considered motivating and fun, as well as an optimal way to introduce children to a diversity of cultures. The CLIL courses were designed in the form of a ‘story-based’ mini syllabus, including common traditional stories from our neighbouring countries in the Balkan and North-East Mediterranean area. Multimodal materials, such as stories, ppt, video clips, songs were used to arouse the students’ interest within a ‘task-based’ framework, which called for working together on a common group task, helping each other and interacting while being involved in “problem-solving”. The effectiveness and feasibility of the project were estimated by collecting both qualitative and quantitative data. The results indicated the positive effect of the CLIL approach on the students’ skills in the target language along with the students’ considerable familiarization with the target cultures.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2014

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