Natalia Evnitskaya

Knowledge construction, meaning-making and interaction in CLIL science classroom communities of practice

This paper draws on Wengers model of community of practice to present preliminary findings on how processes of negotiation of meaning and identity formation occur in knowledge construction, meaning-making and interaction in two secondary Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) science classrooms. It uses a multimodal conversation analysis methodology to provide detailed analyses of how teachers and students use talk-in-interaction and other semiotic resources to build and maintain their communities of practice. The data come from two CLIL classrooms in Spain in the same curricular area (biology) but which differ in geographical and sociolinguistic context (Barcelona and Madrid), and in terms of age, level of secondary education and pedagogical approach. The findings show the complex patterns of participation and reification as teachers and learners use different linguistic and other resources to make meaning. The paper argues that a combination of Wengers meso-level practice model and micro-level multimodal conversation analysis is highly effective in elucidating how learning and identity formation are accomplished in CLIL classrooms. It also suggests that the efforts to understand classroom processes and language use in CLIL classrooms can be strengthened by forging links between CLIL research and the classroom discourse work across different disciplines.

‘Do you know Actimel?’ The adaptive nature of dialogic teacher-led discussions in the CLIL science classroom: a case study

This interpretive case study is framed within recent sociocultural conceptualisations of learning. It draws on research on teacher-led classroom discussions, and investigates the conversational intricacies through which ‘dialogicity’ is accomplished in adaptive ways in one content and language integrated learning (CLIL) science classroom. Multimodal conversation analysis (CA) is performed in order to describe how classroom interactional competence (CIC) is enacted by participants while developing a teacher-led discussion. The data come from a bilingual Catalan-Spanish secondary school classroom in Barcelona in which 16 12-year-old students learn biology in English as a third language. The analysis reveals that: (a) the teachers systematic deployment of multimodal resources ensures comprehension and favours the emergence of learner-initiated turns; (b) as a result, a highly interwoven set of sequences of ‘mediation’ and ‘remediation’ occurs, jointly providing the students with opportunities for the appropriation of language and content; and (c) this abundance of resources contrasts with the scarcity of teacher moves aimed at eliciting more elaborated learner interventions. The study contributes to further understanding of the relationship between language, interaction and learning. It also shows how multimodal CA may offer valuable tools for tracing the process of integrated learning.

Learners' Multimodal Displays of Willingness to Participate in Classroom Interaction in the L2 and CLIL Contexts.

Abstract Drawing on recent conversation-analytic and socio-interactionist research on students’ participation in L1 and L2 classroom interaction in teacher-fronted activities, this paper makes a step further by presenting an exploratory study of students’ displays of willingness to participate (WTP) in classroom interaction and pedagogical activities across two educational and classroom settings (L2 classroom group work and CLIL classroom whole-class activity), both of which are characterized by the absence of teachers’ next-speaker selection practices. The study focuses on occasions where students self-select to provide a sequentially relevant second pair-part within the current activity and how it is oriented to by co-participants, particularly when the expected action is not accomplished. Using a multimodal conversation analytic approach, it shows that students’ WTP is indexed as a social, public demonstration of one’s interest to engage in the ongoing activity through displays of attentiveness to unfolding interaction and learning activities, emerging turn-taking and speakership establishment, engaging in foci of attention and participation frameworks, and taking on relevant participant roles. These findings indicate that WTP is not an absolute and fixed concept but is rather constituted by different aspects or levels of engagement displayed by the participants in interaction on a moment-by-moment basis.

8. Affording Students Opportunities for the Integrated Learning of Content and Language: A Contrastive Study on Classroom Interactional Strategies Deployed by Two CLIL Teachers

This paper is concerned with CLIL in English as a f oreign language in secondary education in Catalonia. Through the use of tools fr om Conversation Analysis and Sociocultural Discourse Analysis, the study contras t the way two different CLIL teachers organise and manage respectively an academ ic conversation. Its goal is to empirically identify components of Classroom Interactional Competence (Walsh, 2006), present in the particular conditions of CLIL settings, by showing how the teachers’ instructional choices in the form of conv ersational adjustments afford students more or fewer opportunities for the integr ated learning of language and content. The study concludes that the different set s of conversational strategies deployed by each teacher determine the quality of e ach conversation and its outcomes in terms of affordances for the integrated learning of content and language.