Making curriculum content accessible to all
In today’s multilingual classrooms, teachers are constantly balancing between helping learners access the curriculum content whilst supporting the development of their English language skills. For those of us who teach EAL learners, the question isn’t what to teach, but how to make the curriculum accessible without diluting its richness and simplifying it too much.
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) offers one powerful answer. By teaching language and curriculum content together, CLIL allows learners to develop their subject knowledge and language skills simultaneously. But when this approach is viewed ‘across cultures’, it becomes even more inclusive and connects learning to the languages and experiences that learners bring with them to the multilingual classrooms.
Understanding CLIL
Coyle, Hood, and Marsh (2010, p.1) define CLIL as ‘an educational approach where an additional language is used for the learning and teaching of both content and language.’ It is not about teaching a simplified curriculum; rather, it is about giving learners the linguistic tools and scaffolded support they need to access more complex ideas.
Coyle’s (2006) 4Cs Framework (Content, Communication, Cognition, and Culture) prompts a reminder that learning involves more than just acquiring words. CLIL is all about helping learners think, analyse, and comprehend whilst developing the language to express those ideas. More importantly, the fourth ‘C’ (Culture) asks teachers to draw on learners’ backgrounds and encourages comparisons and connections that will only deepen learners’ understanding.
This CLIL approach aligns closely with the principles underpinning Learning Village by Across Cultures, which provide scaffolded image-based lessons supporting development of vocabulary, language structures, and reading skills for EAL and multilingual learners. Specifically, each topic in Learning Village’s Survival Language and Curriculum Content Learning Journeys combines content objectives (e.g. understanding habitats, forces, or healthy eating) with language objectives (e.g. using sentence patterns or language blocks).
For example, in the Habitats lesson, learners practise describing animals and environments through structured language, such as:
“The ___ lives in the ___ because it needs ___.”
“It has ___ to help it ___.”
The online lesson contains images for visual support, a translation option to support the home language, and repetitive practice activities to support learners’ understanding of the science topic ‘Habitats’ and the scientific language used. The printable resources that accompany the online lesson provide useful scaffolded support for speaking, reading, and writing.
Getting ready for CLIL but learning Survival Language first
However, as many of you know and have probably experienced, not every learner is ready to access curriculum content in various subjects immediately through English. As Coyle, Hood, and Marsh (2010, p.35) point out, ‘learners’ linguistic ability in the target language is not as advanced as their cognitive ability.’ A newly-arrived EAL learner may understand complex ideas in their home language but they might lack the English to demonstrate this knowledge.
This is where Learning Village’s Survival Language Curriculum Alignment document (found in the yellow ‘Toolbox/Planning’ button on teacher’s logged-in homepage) becomes an invaluable reference. It outlines the everyday English, e.g. greetings, classroom instructions, common nouns, and verbs etc. that learners need before engaging with subject-based content. By starting here, teachers can ensure learners have the basic ‘language for learning’ before they come across the ‘language of learning’ found in curriculum subjects.
In practice, this means that we, as teachers, might start with vocabulary and language structures from the Survival Language Learning Journey to build vocabulary like “open your book”, “sit next to”, and “draw a picture” for those EAL learners, before progressing to more academic topics such as ‘Healthy Eating’ or ‘Materials’ from the Curriculum Content Learning Journey. Once learners can follow instructions, identify key nouns and verbs, and express simple feelings and ideas, they are then ready to engage with CLIL-style content.
CLIL in action
For example, in my own practice, when beginning to teach the topic ‘Healthy Eating’, I combine the use of flashcards, real food items, and sentence frames like ‘We eat ___ because it gives us ___.’ Then, we talk about food groups and also about cultural differences - what is considered healthy in one country, is not always the same in another country. Learners compare meals from their home countries and share recipes by practising cause-and-effect structures. This takes it one step further by practising what they have learnt in a real-life situation.
This is CLIL’s strength: language and content develop together, supported by culture and communication. Learners are not just repeating words, they are using language to think, communicate, and connect.
However, the Curriculum Content Learning Journey in Learning Village might not be the first stop for all EAL learners. We can use it most effectively by:
- Pre-teaching key vocabulary - introduce vocabulary and structures using Survival Language Learning Journeys first.
- Activating learners’ previous experiences and knowledge - encourage learners to compare the topic with what they know from home.
- Providing scaffolded support - use speaking and writing frames such as “It is made of ___ because ___” or “I think ___ because ___” using the ready-made scaffolded resources in the blue buttons area on the teacher's logged-in homepage.
- Providing visuals - use images, diagrams, and real objects to make meaning clearer.
- Encouraging reflection - invite learners to consider how their cultures help them understand the topic.
Why CLIL works
CLIL is an effective approach because it connects thinking, language, and identity. It creates opportunities for learners to use all their linguistic resources, drawing on their first language as a scaffold for English. As Cummins (2019) notes, translanguaging enables learners to ‘use their entire linguistic repertoire’ to make sense of content. Furthermore, as Lin and He (2017, p.230) explain, translanguaging in CLIL settings ‘flows naturally as both teacher and students are intensely engaged in meaning-making about the lesson topics.’When we encourage learners to use all their languages, share their cultural experiences, and connect them to the curriculum, we create a classroom where everyone belongs and where language becomes a bridge not a barrier.
By combining CLIL pedagogy with the scaffolded pathways in Learning Village, we can make curriculum learning accessible to EAL learners at every stage, from the first steps of Survival Language to the advanced Curriculum Content Learning Journeys.
References
Coyle, D. (2006) Content and Language Integrated Learning: Motivating Learners and Teachers. Nottingham: University of Nottingham.
Coyle, D., Hood, P. and Marsh, D. (2010) CLIL: Content and Language Integrated Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cummins, J. (2019) ‘The emergence of translanguaging pedagogy: A dialogue between theory and practice’, Journal of Multilingual Education Research, 9(1), pp. 19–36.
Lin, A.M.Y. and He, P. (2017) ‘Translanguaging as dynamic activity flows in CLIL classrooms’, Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 16(4), pp. 228–244.
