The Natural Approach

Do you know the term Natural Approach? This is a method for beginners based on observation and interpretation on how a person acquires his first language. It emphasizes on communication rather than grammar. One of the things which is very important and conclusive when learning is that the input has to be comprehensible. However, if the input is not comprehensible, you can continue learning because the accent, the entonation... gives us some information. This is the non-verbal communication. 

For that reason, this kind of learning, which defends that we shouldn´t use our mother language in class, is so important in the Kindergarden. In this period, children can acquire a language more easily!

CLIL: Transforming theory into practice

Nowadays, everybody is talking about CLIL education. We can find a lot of interesting information about that new term. However, a CLIL teacher needs to learn how to transform the theory into practice and it is not easy!

Here we have a useful article in which we can learn how to prepare a CLIL unit for our subjects in only five stages. I hope it helps you!

http://www.unifg.it/sites/default/files/allegatiparagrafo/20-01-2014/coyle_hood_marsh_clil_toolkit_pp_48-73.pdf

A wonderful and helpful video for teachers!

I have found in British Council webpage a very enthusiastic conference by Carol Read who is a teacher, a teacher trainer and a materials writer with over 30 years experience in English language teaching. Nowadays, she works as a writer and international educational consultant advising on pre-primary and primary foreing language programmes and delivering customised teacher education courses.

If you are a teacher, this video could give you some resources to motivate your pupils, but I think that the real secret of motivating is the teacher, because he/she has the power to create an atractive learning.

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/carol-read-secret-working-children

CLIL Article by David Marsh

Do you know the term CLIL? Maybe, you have heard it, but you don´t know where it comes from. If you are a student or a teacher and you need to know more about CLIL, this article is for you! David Marsh gives us a general idea about why it's convenient to use CLIL in our classes. And in addition, he answers the most common questions abut this kind of learning.

http://archive.ecml.at/mtp2/CLILmatrix/pdf/1UK.pdf

David Marsh on CLIL

The University of Cambridge share with us a useful interview with David Marsh who has worked on multilingualism and bilingual education since the 1980s. David gives a great insight into CLIL answering relevant questions: the futur of CLIL, advice on how to start up CLIL, programme and much more. Enjoy it!

David was part of the team which conducted groundwork leading to the launch of the term CLIL in 1994. In 2002, he coordinated production of CLIL - The European Dimension: Actions, Trends and Foresight Potential for the European Commission (DG EAC).  This overview of the situation in Europe was used in the compilation of the 2004-2006 EC Action Plan: Promoting Language Learning & Linguistic Diversity. 

David Marsh was Born in Australia, educated in the UK and now based in Finland, he has extensive experience of teacher development, capacity-building, research and consultancy in a range of different countries in Africa, Europe and Asia.