CLIL lessons: a means to foster both environmental awareness and integrated skills in an EFL classroom

Abstract

This document presents an action research project that studies the impact of using the CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) approach in EFL lessons to foster both environmental awareness and integrated skills in tenth graders. The participants of this project were tenth graders whose ages were between 13 and 17 years old from a public school in Bogotá, Colombia. Three cycles of pedagogical intervention during this research were held, where the data collection instruments were surveys, artifacts, field notes, audio and video recordings, and interviews. The data analysis revealed that students showed improvement of both their English language skills and their concern in regard to environmental themes. The main conclusion was that CLIL, as a teaching approach, not only served as a means to develop skills integrally, but also helped the learners realize that through foreign language learning they could reflect on the environmental problems that affect people’s lives and surroundings