Labelling works, explaining doesn't
Part-way through the first term of a bilingual programme, a Grade 8 geography teacher (a subject specialist, fluent in the L2) teaches a 50-minute lesson on plate tectonics to 28 students at CEFR A2–B1. He spends 25 minutes on a 22-item glossary with L1 translations, then reads a textbook paragraph aloud, asks 'Is everyone OK?' (the class nods), and issues a labelling worksheet. At the end he asks: 'Why do earthquakes happen at plate boundaries?' Only three students write a causal sentence; the rest write 'Because the plates move.' On the labelling task, 80% score full marks. The teacher's conclusion: 'They need more vocabulary before we can do explanation.'
1. Is the teacher's conclusion justified? Justify your judgement with reference to at least two CLIL principles.
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No - the evidence points the other way.
- The labelling result contradicts the diagnosis. 80% success on labelling shows the language of learning (the key terms) is largely in place receptively. The failure is at a different level.
- The gap is in the language for learning. Explaining causation requires exponents such as because / as a result of / this leads to / when X happens, Y follows. The class has never been given these, so 'Because the plates move' is the best they can do with the linguistic resources available.
- The demand is CALP, not BICS. Naming a feature on a diagram is context-embedded and cognitively lower-order (identify). Producing a decontextualised causal explanation is context-reduced and cognitively higher-order. Shifting from one to the other is a jump in cognitive and linguistic demand at the same time - the classic CLIL overload the teacher has not planned for.
- 'More vocabulary' would not fix it. Adding a 23rd term does not supply the syntax of causation or the genre of explanation. The teacher is treating a discourse problem as a lexical one.
A defensible conclusion would be: the students know the terms but cannot yet realise the explanation genre in the L2, and the lesson never modelled or scaffolded it.
2. Identify what is missing from the lesson at the level of scaffolding, and propose two concrete additions with a rationale for each.
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What is missing: the lesson scaffolds at word level only. There is no sentence-level or text-level scaffold, no model of the target genre, and no opportunity for oral rehearsal before writing.
Addition 1 - a cause–effect substitution table / sentence frame. Give learners: 'Earthquakes happen at ______ because ______. When the plates ______, pressure builds up and this leads to ______.' Rationale: it supplies the language for learning that the diagnostic task exposed, at exactly the point of need, while leaving the content choice to the learner. The cognitive demand (selecting the correct mechanism) is preserved - the frame does not do the thinking.
Addition 2 - model the genre, then co-construct. Read a 3-sentence model explanation aloud, highlight the causal connectors on the board, then build a second explanation jointly with the class before they write independently. Rationale: the 'language through learning' principle - new meanings are constructed in interaction. Gradual release (model → joint construction → independent) gives learners a visible target and reduces the leap from labelling to explaining.
A supporting move: two minutes of think–pair–share before writing, so the explanation is spoken once before it is written.
3. The teacher asks 'Is everyone OK?' and the class nods. Why is this not evidence of understanding, and what would you do instead?
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Why it fails:
- It is a closed, yes/no question that invites a socially safe answer; nodding costs the learner nothing.
- It checks whether the task is clear, not whether the concept has been understood.
- In a CLIL class it also hides the language problem: a learner can understand the instruction and still be unable to produce the explanation.
What to do instead:
- Concept-checking questions that require reasoning: 'If two plates slide past each other rather than collide, would the pressure be the same? Why?'
- A quick response format all learners must commit to - mini-whiteboards, hands-down cold call, or a 30-second write - so the teacher sees every answer rather than a chorus.
- Demand a full sentence in the answer and accept a partially correct one for repair, e.g. 'Yes - because when they move apart, the magma rises; can you say that with "as a result"?'
- Wait time of 5+ seconds after a question; in an L2, processing time is the difference between a nod and an answer.