In Content and Language Integrated Learning, one key issue is the differentiation between content area language (discipline-specific language) and everyday language and how the linguistic and competence gap can be bri...In Content and Language Integrated Learning, one key issue is the differentiation between content area language (discipline-specific language) and everyday language and how the linguistic and competence gap can be bridged. Language is the conveyor of meanings and it functions differently when the context that it is embedded in changes. In everyday language, frequently-encountered objects and concepts are present and the understanding of an idea is supported with abundant contextual clues. However, academic language is, in a sense, de-contextualized, in other words, context-reduced (Cummins, 2000). Notable features of academic language are high density of meanings, high level of formality, different syntactic structures from familiar and simpler everyday language, and discipline-specific terminology also poses great challenges to the comprehension. This paper will examine the differences between everyday language and the language of particular disciplines and the nature of discipline-specific language features. Drawn from the analysis, pedagogical suggestions are presented with reference to the teaching strategies and ways to bridge the gap. In addition, educational implications for CLIL will also be briefly discussed in the final section.展开更多
文摘In Content and Language Integrated Learning, one key issue is the differentiation between content area language (discipline-specific language) and everyday language and how the linguistic and competence gap can be bridged. Language is the conveyor of meanings and it functions differently when the context that it is embedded in changes. In everyday language, frequently-encountered objects and concepts are present and the understanding of an idea is supported with abundant contextual clues. However, academic language is, in a sense, de-contextualized, in other words, context-reduced (Cummins, 2000). Notable features of academic language are high density of meanings, high level of formality, different syntactic structures from familiar and simpler everyday language, and discipline-specific terminology also poses great challenges to the comprehension. This paper will examine the differences between everyday language and the language of particular disciplines and the nature of discipline-specific language features. Drawn from the analysis, pedagogical suggestions are presented with reference to the teaching strategies and ways to bridge the gap. In addition, educational implications for CLIL will also be briefly discussed in the final section.
