I used to speak English 

Petra Rovitti

The day after the exam

As managers, we see our students attend classes, get their certificate for the level of English they need, and then leave. Once they reach their goal, most students usually take a break and think about whether they need to keep studying or not. “Use it or lose it" someone says, and we all know it’s completely true. But, sometimes the motivation is not strong enough, so they stop, only to come back after months with very little motivation, just because they’ve found out that they are starting to lose the language they had learnt. 

A switch from the norm

Strongly inspired by the CLIL methodology, my strongest recommendation to other managers would be to create a buffet of themed courses. One of the core points of CLIL methodology is to aim to develop student's intellectual, emotional, social skills through problem solving not prioritising grades.[1] This is why I think that  for the students who already have a good command of the language but still need to practice, they do so while learning about new topics they find interesting. A course about make-up, wine tasting, or even cooking could be an added value to them and motivate them to return to a classroom with less stress and more focused on communication.

 [1] Agolli, 2014

A lot to consider

As managers, the key questions when considering themed courses would be:

-       Should we hire new specialised teachers or offer this opportunity for experimentation to our current teachers?

-       What are the costs and risks involved in a venture like this?

-       What would advertising look like?

-       Will the value of a course like this be perceived by the students?

And so on…

 Selecting the right teachers

The most time- and cost-effective option would be to run themed courses with our current teachers. Some CLIL courses are implemented with two teachers (one caring about the content and the other about the language) but I really think that just one teacher per course would be enough as it has been observed that in some circumstances the intervention of a second teacher during the lesson has been detrimental.[2] This would save efforts on recruitment and onboarding. This also defines how the courses are marketed: not as a big investment, but as something organically added to our selection of courses. A risk which could arise would be if the teachers are not themselves experts in the theme they’re now teaching, potentially removing some authority from them in the eyes of students. The assumption is that students who choose to attend a specific themed course are usually passionate about that topic and they may even know more than the teacher. On the other hand, delivering more technical courses would mean finding teachers who have both a great experience in the field and a good level of English—which can be rare. Only a comprehensive market research process can tell how extreme the risks and efforts need to be in your specific context.

[2] Agolli, 2014, p. 13

Maybe the solution…

A solution could be to ask our teachers to create courses according to subjects in which they are already specialised. For example, a teacher who loves photography could develop and deliver an English photography course. Also, as the planning of the course and the lessons themselves, could happen in parallel with the selection and or physical production of the material, the teacher wouldn't take too much time to do it.[3] There is in fact a great diversity among the actual CLIL teachers: some of them are already implementing CLIL courses despite not having received a specific methodologic CLIL training neither before nor after their accreditation.[4] Their experience, combined with their teaching expertise, can be eye-opening for students who have previously only used English in exam-oriented environments and rarely for real-life communication. As an example, I'm planning to offer one of these courses to some students right after they have passed their certification exam. At the moment, as I have a background in the tourism industry, I aim to create a short course of 8 - 10 lessons on Egypt.

[3] Markiranta, 2014, pp. 43–45

[4] Espinar and Ramos, 2020, p. 22

Learning aims

I’m very confident that students would be enthusiastic to attend classes about things about which they are passionate and at the same time feel satisfied seeing that their language improves quickly. I say this because together with other students I’ve been attending themed classes on this website: www.futurelearn.com.  Seeing as we, as students, were all fond of the topic we chose, we started looking for new and more accurate vocabulary to use and picked it up easily. This has had a great impact on the whole learning process.

Customer loyalty

I do believe that these suggestions could be a good way to retain students or at least, make them think about coming back to our school instead of looking for something else or trying something different. In fact, even if we wouldn't have support from content teachers, we know that also implementing just a soft CLIL model, the student's thinking would be enabled[5] and with it their commitment to the course. This is why, I’m convinced that providing them with a safe place to have regular practice and get rid of doubts and at the same time giving them the opportunity to learn something extra, make new friends with similar interests could be a way to build customer loyalty. And after all, if “use it or lose it” is true, we'd better help them use it… otherwise, they might come back saying “I used to speak English” and that’s not the tense we’re aiming for! 

[5] Dantaz, 2017, p.3

References:

● Agolli, R., 2014. Perceiving CLIL nuances. IATEFL Voices, (237), p. 12.

● Coyle, D., Hood, P. and Marsh, D., 2010. CLIL: Content and language integrated learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

● Custodio Espinar, M. and García Ramos, J.M., 2020. Are accredited teachers equally trained for CLIL? The CLIL teachers’ paradox. Porta Linguarum, (33), pp. 9-25.

● Dantaz, N., 2017. CLIL or not to CLIL. IATEFL Voices, (258), p. 3.

●     FutureLearn, n.d. FutureLearn. Available at: https://www.futurelearn.com.