Collaboration between English teachers and Foreign-language teachers
Since its creation, CLIE has promoted the idea of Language Awareness, and in particular the idea that both English teachers and Foreign-language teachers are ‘language teachers’ and could benefit from collaboration. Unfortunately, this is not how the English and FL departments in most schools see their relationships, and collaboration is in fact unusual and rare. CLIE is still trying to promote more collaboration between these two subject areas in face of the fact that the situation in schools mirrors that in universities, where it is unusual for English and FL departments to collaborate.
We are therefore delighted to note that the Cambridge Primary Review Trust recommends collaboration between English and FL teachers in primary schools. The arguments are spelt out in articles by Wayne Tennent (UK Literacy Asssociation) and Liz Black (Association for Language Learning) in a booklet for primary schools:
Alexander, Robin, Ben Balin, Liz Black, James Devaney, Peter Gregory, Jan Harrison, Carol Lukins, et al. 2014. Primary Curriculum 2014. Developing an outstanding curriculum in your school. Harlow: Pearson Education.
You can download the relevant sections (by permission of Robin Alexander).
The CLiE project has achieved the following:
- We have an email list: fleng@jiscmail.ac.uk. Please tell Dick Hudson if you would like to join it.
- We’ve written an article about English-FL collaboration jointly written by representatives of both sides:
- Published in Languages Today (the magazine of the Association for Language Learning – only available to members of ALL) Issue 22, Spring 2016, pages 30-32.
- Pdf available with permission of the Editor
- An extended version by Steven Fawkes containing further resources and information, also published on the ALL website.
- Also published in Teaching English (the magazine for members of NATE, the National Association for the Teaching of English)
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Anon. 2016. English and Modern Foreign Languages: a collaborative approach to grammar. Teaching English 11. 16–17.
- Pdf available with permission of the Editor
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- Published in Languages Today (the magazine of the Association for Language Learning – only available to members of ALL) Issue 22, Spring 2016, pages 30-32.
- We are hoping to build a collection of examples of good practice in schools, where English and FL teachers collaborate fruitfully. If you know of any such examples, please tell us.
Here are some links to material or websites that are relevant to this project.
- 2017.4: A conference (April 1 in Oxford) about research relevant to teaching English and FL
- Teaching grammar across the curriculum
- Research supporting collaboration between English and FL
