An investigation into CLIL-related sections of EFL coursebooks: issues of CLIL inclusion in the publishing market

Abstract

The current ELT global coursebook market has embraced CLIL as a weak form of bilingual education and an innovative component to include in General English coursebooks for EFL contexts. In this paper I investigate how CLIL is included in ELT coursebooks aimed at teenaged learners, available to teachers in Argentina. My study is based on the content analysis of four series which include a section advertised as CLIL-oriented. Results suggest that such sections are characterised by (1) little correlation between featured subject specific content and school curricula in L1, (2) oversimplification of contents, and (3) dominance of reading skills development and lower-order thinking tasks. Through this study, I argue that CLIL components become superficial supplements rather than a meaningful attempt to promote weak forms of bilingual education.

Digital storytelling as a disciplinary literacy enhancement tool for EFL students

“…However, a recent large-scale CLIL program evaluation in Spain revealed a lack of key egalitarianism or social inclusion principals essential to CLIL education (Cañado 2018). CLIL materials and teaching resources were also criticised for their lack of authenticity and scarce integration of technology (Cañado 2018), highlighting the importance of inclusiveness and authenticity in teaching content knowledge to EFL students (Cañado 2018;Darío 2014).…”

Developing Tertiary Level Clil Learners’ Intercultural Awareness With a Self-Produced Coursebook Integrating Content and Language

“…As a result, CLIL practitioners may rely heavily on centralised or ready-made materials (Yang, 2020). Currently, CLIL materials are mostly written based on EFL principles to cater to a large international market (Banegas, 2014) and thus customised adaptation and connection to local cultures are rarely detected (Bell & Gower, 2011;Tomlinson, 2012). Furthermore, these TESOL-based CLIL materials tend to overlook the balance of content and language designs (Coyle, Hood, & Marsh, 2010).…”

“…Due to the lack of commonly-recognised systems for judging the quality of CLIL materials, sometimes the rules of evaluating EFL books would be used as most of the current materials are often designed in a language-based weak CLIL form. However, these criteria may not be appropriate for the conceptual framework of CLIL pedagogy (Banegas, 2014;Yang, 2018). Several CLIL researchers have attempted to establish the principles of evaluating quality CLIL materials such as Ball, Kelly, and Clegg (2015), Mehisto (2012), and Yang (2018), who used Mehisto's standards to appraise his self-produced CLIL textbook.…”

Introduction

“…Underpinned by the critical analysis by Cenoz et al (2014) and by Dallinger et al (2016), CLIL implementation can be found extensively in Europe, but to a lesser extent in North and South America, Australia, Asia, or Africa, primarily due to a lack of suitable materials. Dario Banegas (2014) found that advertised CLIL-oriented EFL coursebooks have "(1) little correlation between featured subject specific content and school curricula in L1 (non-English), ( 2) oversimplification of contents and (3) dominance of reading skills development and lower-order thinking tasks" (p. 345). Ball et al (2015) consider that many materials have no consideration of language or culture support because they are not produced for EFL learners.…”