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© 2014 The authors and IJLTER.ORG. All rights reserved.
International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research
Vol. 8, No.1, pp. 76-92, October 2014
«Learning in the Traces of Greek Culture»: A
CLIL Project for Raising Cultural Awareness and
Developing L2 Skills
Isaak Papadopoulos and Dr. Eleni Griva
University of Western Macedonia
Florina, Greece
Abstract: In response to the new demands of education in Greece,
including a significant percentage of multilingual and multicultural
student populations, the need of teaching Greek as a Second language
(GL2) has been mandatory for the sake of immigrant students‟ inclusion
in the dominant society. This pilot project, following the Content and
Language Integrated Learning (C.L.I.L) approach, has been piloted with
a class of 30 immigrant children (aged 11 years old) of Albanian origin,
who had been attending a Greek primary school for 3 years. It was
initiated with the purpose to provide insights into developing students‟
skills in GL2 and aspects of Greek culture and history. The mini syllabus
was developed on the basis of criteria for developing sustainable CLIL
teaching as suggested by Coyle‟s 4 Cs framework (2007) and was
designed around ten units with famous Greek ancient monuments being
at the core. For the estimation of the feasibility of this project, there have
been used three basic tools a) a pre- and a post- test about the language
and the content knowledge assessment, b) journals kept by the teacher
and c) portfolios kept by the students throughout the project. The
findings showed a significant improvement of the students‟ skills in
GL2, as well as their enhancement of content knowledge.
Keywords: CLIL, second language, culture cultural awareness language
skills
Introduction
The European Union has indicated a great interest in promoting multilingualism
in the current society, and launched numerous actions to support and maintain
linguistic diversity in European context (European Commission, 2003)Typically,
the Action Plan "Promoting language learning and linguistic diversity 2004-
2006" makes an extensive reference to different areas of language education such
as the extension of the benefits arising from language learning to all citizens as a
lifelong activity, the need to upgrade the quality language teaching at all levels
and of course the need for a European environment that encourages learning.
Within this wider promotion of multilingualism, the Content and Language