if the student’s intention was to take her desire to learn in Chinese as a point of departure, and consider how some Chinese-medium subject areas might be included in this setting, literature on CLIL would be more useful for her than literature on EAL-in-the-mainstream. Even with this kind of overlap among the approaches, I have found that highlighting context is a useful way to guide students’ thinking about bilingual education as a frame for TESOL in a mean- ingful way. Contextualising content and language integration has encouraged students to reflect more deeply on how their own learning and teaching expe- riences fit with literature on bilingual education.
2009). In Australia, this systemic functional linguistics approach to language has been particularly influential in English policy documents (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, 2020), and has been taken up in different settings such as the United States (e.g., Schleppegrell, 2004) and China (Lin, 2016). A functional language approach has also been adopted in CLIL in Europe (e.g., Dalton-Puffer, 2016; Llinares, Morton, & Whittaker, 2012; Lorenzo, 2013). The third category of language scaffolding refers to a strong focus on helping students understand and display content knowledge;
language development is not necessarily a goal. For example, strategies for scaffolding can include clarity and structure of lessons, explicit correction, repetition, using visual aids and connecting to students’ prior knowledge (see Navés, 2002; de Graaff, Koopman, Anikina, & Westhoff, 2007 for a sum- mary of strategies in the context of European CLIL programmes). Finally, crosslinguistic pedagogy refers to the presence of more than one language in the classroom, and how language resources can be leveraged strategically for learning language and content.
CLIL pedagogy offers a structural frame for these four overlapping catego- ries, and can help to guide students’ understanding of the relationship between scaffolding learning of content, learning languages developmentally and lever- aging students’ linguistic resources in a holistic sense. This structural frame relies on the 4Cs pedagogy in particular (e.g., Coyle, 2007; Coyle, Hood, &
Marsh, 2010). The point of departure for the 4Cs is the co-construction of meaning with students (Coyle, 2007) that, from the outset, steers thinking away from highly transmissive teaching settings to classrooms where students are learning actively. The 4Cs refer to the importance of content, communica- tion, cognition and culture/community. The communication dimension is further divided into language of, for and through learning. Language of learning is the language directly related to the content that is being taught, language for learning is the language of the activities the teacher chooses to guide the learn- ing of content, and language through learning is the unanticipated language that arises as students take part in the activities. The focus on communication is thus directly related to the content of the lesson. The cognition and culture/
community dimension are also content driven. The cognition dimension con- nects well with teacher education in Australia, where the idea of cognitive demand is taught through what is frequently termed ‘higher-order and lower- order thinking skills’. In language classes, cognition can be constrained to the lower-order memorisation and comprehension of texts. In subject areas, stu- dents often need to analyse, synthesise and evaluate, and generally engage in what is understood to be higher-order thinking. The final dimension of
culture is conceptualised as surrounding the other ‘C’s, and can refer to a learning community as much as to cross-cultural learning.
Although content is only one of the 4Cs pedagogy and no explicit prefer- ence is given to this dimension (see Coyle, 2007), the other three dimensions can frequently be harnessed to think about the scaffolding of this content knowledge (Turner, 2019, 2020). For example, the language needed to learn content and complete particular activities can take priority, not the linguistic progression of the students. This interpretation of the 4Cs allows subject area teachers who do not have a deep knowledge about language to scaffold the language needed through more general teaching strategies, such as visual aids, clarity and structure of lesson, and repetition. Quite logically, in an MTESOL course, students tend to be interested in TESOL, and not necessarily inter- ested in the teaching and learning of content other than the English language.
This has led to a sticking point with some of my students, who struggle to understand the relevance of what they are learning to a language classroom.
The connection with language development—the practical content of what they understand themselves to be studying in the course—is not immediately clear to them.
The 4Cs framing is a useful way to address students’ initial misgivings by demonstrating how a very strong form of task-based language teaching (TBLT), and the consideration of content and cognition, can be aligned with linguistic progression and strategic use of students’ linguistic repertoire in class. In reality, this alignment might happen in a distributed way: language teachers may collaborate with subject area teachers for example, or they may link their language and subject area classes if they are dually qualified (see Turner, 2019). We consider how it might happen in the same classroom in the module. The main topics that relate to pedagogy are academic and communi- cative language, focus on form, classroom language(s) use, genre theory (tak- ing a systemic functional perspective), assessment, receptive skills and productive skills. In our discussion of communicative and academic language, we focus on a continuum of contextualised and decontextualised language.
This adds to the 4Cs’ positioning of cognition as embedded in learning about content by showing the range of cognitive demand that is embedded in the choices we make about language. The importance of these choices (or register) and the associated cognitive demand is our entry point into pedagogy, and mapping the 4Cs is our next step.
The communication dimension of the 4Cs lends itself well to a discussion on form-focused instruction, and how this might be used both to recycle and to teach new language in a holistic way; that is to say, to link language use directly to students’ linguistic progression. Next, the students are given the
opportunity to begin thinking about a module of work by laying out the con- tent, activities (cognition) and language of, for and through learning in five intersecting mind maps (see Coyle et al., 2010, pp. 56–64, for an example).
The preliminary feedback students receive on their mind maps relates to their choice of content and activities, and whether the communication dimension in particular fits well with their choice. Traditional TESOL pedagogy, whereby language is based around grammar and taught via a series of discrete familiar and/or engaging micro-themes can be conspicuous in these maps. The maps thus provide a platform to discuss how developing unified content over a number of hours can help to control, as well as to extend, language, and how working towards projects or activities with higher cognitive demand can be engaging for students. An example of a student’s mind map is given in Fig. 1.
The context was a Year 4 primary mathematics class in China in which the children had begun learning English at an early age, and could express them- selves using simple sentences and basic grammar. The aim was a 60 percent English and 40 percent Chinese distribution of language in the classroom.
Subsequent topics can all then be related back to these mind maps, in order to discuss the topics as they relate to specific contexts. The content of the mind maps is incorporated by the students into their programme, under con- tent objectives, language objectives and activities. Many students choose to write the language objectives and then the content objectives because they choose a setting of content-based language teaching (language-driven CLIL).
In either case, the language objectives need to relate to a bigger picture of language progression, and not only to understanding the content of the mod- ule. Once the students have completed the five intersecting mind maps, they can then formulate a plan (and a rationale) for strategic use of languages in the classroom. In the assignment, students often colour-code which languages they are going to use and when in different activities. For the assessment topic, there is a strong emphasis on the extent to which language or content is being assessed, and CLIL literature is very useful for this (e.g., Bentley, 2010; Coyle et al., 2010; Mehisto et al., 2008). There is also an additional focus on the way that assessment might not only be in one language, and how this can be navigated.
The other topics—genre theory, receptive and productive skills—empha- sise language-in-context, or functional language. In genre-based pedagogy, genres are types of texts that have different functions, such as explaining, persuading, informing, instructing and entertaining (Derewianka & Jones, 2016). It is important to consider that the genre of what students need to understand might not be the same as the genre they need to produce. For example, students might read reports of a phenomenon in order to write an
essay. Functional language can be considered through the 4Cs communica- tion lens of language of, for and through learning in that the lens can help students think through what language is embedded in, and central to the displaying of content knowledge. The genre of the assessment can be viewed as the language of learning, and the genre of other activities, language for learning. If students need to create an informative poster for an assessment,
Implementation in reality The order of operations 1:
addition/subtraction, OR multiplication/division
The basic rules of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and
division
Content
The order of operations 2:
addition/subtraction, and multiplication/division
Explain the reason of selection Exchange results to get prices
of all items Cognition/Activity
Carrying out the implementation by purchasing
appropriate items Review of the orders of operations by calculating
prices of some items
Fig. 1 A mind map by Fan Chen on teaching mathematics at a primary school in China
the kind of language that the teacher expects this poster to contain becomes the language of learning. Negotiating essential and not-so-essential language in the classroom, and looking for connections between them, can guide understanding on how language can be scaffolded and recycled. This is
Language of learning
Grammatical progression in using modal verbs to
express willingness for specific items Effective use of future
tense, conditional forms for cause
Language of request, answer, and explaining Key vocabulary and
phrases
Communicative strategies Dictionary skills
Language through learning
Extending presentation skills Enhancing Q&A
skills
In groups: asking &
answering questions with own resources
Writing a simple purchasing report Language to build
arguments & build explanations
Language for learning
Fig. 1 (continued)
especially important in situations of low proficiency: thinking about effective ways to improve communicative language may involve students’ extended language practices, or leading students from what they know how to say in one language towards greater dexterity in the target language.