FAQs by Work Placement tutors/ working life representatives

1. How does this approach benefit working life?
2. But most of our students don’t need additional languages to get jobs in this area so why would it be worthwhile doing CLIL here?
3. Working life calls for interpersonal communication skills. Can CLIL be of help in this?
4. Is there any certificate which clearly shows the student’s language proficiency?
5. Can CLIL promote social inclusion and egalitarianism in my country?

Any vocational or professional sector work requires a person to have the best possible communication skills for any given situation. Communication is more than language. It is about how to use language. CLIL gives the student the opportunity to develop the key interface between knowing about his/her field, and being able to communicate this knowledge in the real world. (Marsh, Marsland & Stenberg, 2001,p.13)

Through CLIL particularly at medium to high exposure, students are linguistically prepared to take up their right to study abroad, and often better prepared for opportunities in Europe for future studies and working life.

European integration, and EU membership expansion, the spread of the Internet and use of computers in the workplace, and trans-globalisation of commerce mean the world is indeed shrinking. An international economy creates a demand for workers to operate cross-linguistically more than ever before, and pressure is constantly increasing for future workers to be able to articulate and communicate on a scale not seen before. In many professions, work has changed as we shift from one form of industrial era to another. People in many professions need the essential skills for working and communicating in networked teams. Team skills are based on interdependence, feelings expressed, commitment, interpersonal skills, trust, conflict resolution and cooperation. All of these are dependent on personal communication skills. (Marsh, Marsland & Stenberg, 2001, p. 15)

If the students don’t need languages now, they almost certainly will at some point in the early days of their working lives. The saying that ‘no person is an island’ is as true now as it was in the past. In order to equip youngsters for the future, we need to act now whilst they are undergoing fundamental training. Language and communication do not come easily to all people, especially the types of communication competencies increasingly essential for working life. (Marsh, Marsland & Stenberg, 2001,p. 16).

It is indeed true that the workplace increasingly requires evidence of being able to use optimal interpersonal communication skills. This is due to the fact that there is a need for good communicators. Evidence of this need can be found in, for example, types of employment advertising found in the mass media and on the Internet. In the past, such announcements might only have requested evidence of technical or professional skills. But over recent years there has been a trend to include certain types of communicative and linguistic skills. Perhaps this is partly due to fashion, but it is probably the recognition that within the labour markets people in the workforce should have both professional and interpersonal communication skills. (Marsh, Marsland & Stenberg , 2001, p. 18-19)

Interpersonal communication is not so much about learning to say the ‘right things at the right time’, but, rather, understanding how to read situations and then communicate appropriately according to intentions. Thus, we could argue that interpersonal skill is not locked into specific language skill and awareness, but that it transcends these and becomes a skill in itself. (Marsh, Marsland & Stenberg, 2001, p. 19)

In the past, some vocational and professional education, particularly in the technical and engineering sectors, has not given enough attention to the ‘human factor’ on courses and training. CLIL can repair this situation because the experience of ‘doing things’ through an additional language can be found to have a positive wash-back effect on getting students to consider how they ‘do things’ in their first language. In other words, CLIL develops communication skills regardless of any specific language. (Marsh, Marsland & Stenbergeds. , 2001,p. 19-20)

Putting aside certification of overall educational achievement such as the International Baccalaureate, schools and colleges often link CLIL/EMILE programs to measurements of language competence through organizations based in other countries such as the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate, Alliance Francaise or the Goethe-institute. Such certification can be regarded as enhancing learners' curriculum vitae. But in addition, there are other options which become increasingly attractive if students experience forms of CLIL/EMILE and the linked activities which may ensue such as increased contact with people in other countries through project work or travel. The most obvious is the European Language Portfolio. (CLIL/EMILE 2002, p.176)

Laurea Tuusulanjärvi are planning to start developing a portfolio system in which students gather all the pieces of work they have done in languages other than their mother tongue and put them into their language portfolio. This enables the integration of languages into different projects and motivates students to carry out various tasks in foreign languages. The ’reward’ is a certain amount of extra credits (from 1cr up to 10cr), depending on the nature and number of given tasks. This might be one answer to the problem of how to evaluate the study outcomes in a situation where student A carries out a certain task in Finnish and student B prefers for example Spanish, Swedish, German etc.

The term ’increasingly internationalised world’ brings with it some degree of negative stress which affects young people today who are actively training for working life. In some regions lack of work has resulted in some young people being very concerned about trying to get the best ‘portfolio’ together in order that they may be successful in finding appropriate work. Dual focused learning, which can lead to dual-focused certification, would be frequently valued bonus resulting from participation in certain types of CLIL programmes. (Marsh, Marsland & Stenbergeds. , 2001,p. 27)

CLIL in mainstream education provides a greater range of young people that earlier with opportunities for linguistic development that would previously have been either denied or unavailable for lack of resources. Thus, in Europe, the argument that CLIL is egalitarian by nature is strongly voiced in some regions. Providing the opportunity for learning languages was a major shift of policy in some educational systems over the last fifty years. To provide opportunities to actively use these languages at school or college is an experience which CLIL is seen to provide. (CLIL/EMILE 2002, p.174)

We have heard and seen a lot about the ways in which our societies are changing, particularly within Europe with changes brought about because of the processes of integration. The impact of computerization alone is constantly making the world a smaller place – a place in which the benefits of being able to speak different languages are becoming more and more obvious. These changes have, however, brought along social exclusion in a greater extent. Some other factors causing exclusion are socio economic barriers, poor learning environments, inflexible curricula etc.

It has been argued that forms of CLIL can act as a potential tool for reducing the effects of social exclusion on additional language learning (Marsland & Marsh, 1999). CLIL has been in education for a very long time. The difference between now and the past is that CLIL is no longer only in the hands of specialised schools, colleges or otherwise privileged students. (Marsh, Marsland & Stenberg, 2001, p.15)