The use of the L1 in a CLIL lesson in Secondary Education in Galicia

Abstract

During the last decades, many steps have been taken towards the promotion of plurilingualism in Galicia. One of the most widespread initiatives undertaken in this autonomous community is the creation of bilingual sections and plurilingual educational institutions network in 2010 in Early Stages, Primary and Secondary Education across the autonomous community. As a unifying element, they follow the CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) methodology: a non-linguistic content subject is taught in a foreign language. However, the language of instruction is not the only one used in these lessons; the L1 is sometimes present in CLIL. Despite previous misconceptions on whether using the L1 in foreign language lessons would be counterproductive, research has proved that CLIL may benefit from a certain coexistence of both languages (Méndez García & Pavón Vázquez, 2012). Contrary to the idea of L1 usage due to poor language proficiency, the appearance of both languages in students’ and CLIL teachers’ speech may point to a deeper understanding of both languages. In our discussion of this topic we will refer the concept of ‘translanguaging’, which can be useful to understand the use of different languages in the Galician CLIL sections. Therefore, this study endeavours to analyse the use of the L1 (Spanish-Galician) and L2 (English) as a code-switching practice in a CLIL Secondary Education context. Within this framework, Bloom’s taxonomy of HOTS (Higher Order Thinking Skills) and LOTS (Lower Order Thinking Skills) (Bloom, 1956) will be accounted in order to assess the type of spoken productions and how code-switching is influenced by said thinking skills.