Designing a Task-Based Unit Proposal Using CLIL Methodology

The implementation of bilingual education offers students valuable opportunities to engage with individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds while strengthening their cognitive abilities. This is achieved through access to global information, predominantly presented in English, which significantly contributes to the development of essential cognitive and communicative competencies. Consequently, learning English enables students to navigate specific communicative situations and broadens their cultural perspectives by exposing them to different worldviews.

Bilingual education is particularly significant as it fosters human dignity and promotes personal development. It is essential for educators to design teaching processes that are responsive to students' interests and needs. By selecting appropriate instructional strategies, teachers can ensure that students perform effectively and gain comprehensive knowledge.

Recognizing this, the focus of this project is the study and application of the English language through Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). This dual-focused educational approach aims to enhance students' communicative competence. Mastery of English, in turn, opens doors to improved work and educational opportunities, ultimately enhancing students' quality of life.

This approach seeks to integrate the four primary language skills—listening, speaking, reading, and writing—while fostering an understanding of how individuals interact with their surroundings. It emphasizes the importance of considering the sociocultural contexts in which language is used, enabling students to connect their learning with real-world applications.

To address these goals, a task-based unit will be designed for first-grade students, focusing on practical language use in context.

Didactic Unit: Senses

This didactic unit is aimed at first-grade students from Institución Educativa Distrital La Libertad, located in a suburban neighborhood of Barranquilla, Colombia. The class consists of 23 children, aged 5 to 8, from low socio-economic backgrounds. Most students come from areas where English is not prioritized, and many do not perceive learning the language as relevant to their lives. This is largely due to limited access to resources and the prevailing mindset that their future opportunities may be constrained to the labor of their parents, such as construction or domestic work.

Moreover, many families lack the financial means to support their children’s higher education, which influences students' attitudes towards learning English and, more broadly, their vision for their future. At the school, English is taught as part of the broader "Humanidades" curriculum, which includes both English and Spanish. Starting this year, first graders receive 225 minutes of English instruction weekly, divided into five 45-minute sessions, reflecting an increased emphasis on the subject.

Task Components

To address these challenges, the unit is designed based on Nunan’s (2004) components of a task, which include goal-setting, input, activities, and learner roles. The unit’s goal is for students to make simple descriptions and classifications related to the five senses within a specific environmental context.

Goal: The students will:

·         Understand how senses help people perceive various characteristics of objects (e.g., temperature, taste, sound, smell, color, texture, and shape).

·         Identify and name external body parts that allow individuals to interact with their surroundings.

By the end of the unit, students should be able to:

·         Describe and classify objects based on sensory input (e.g., sounds, smells, colors).

·         Recognize and differentiate between the sense organs.

Input: Authentic materials are adapted to the local context, including photographs, drawings, videos, and picture stories, which will help make the lesson relatable and engaging for the students.

Activities:

This lesson will be carried out over 90 minutes following Willis' (1996) task framework:

1.    Pre-task (10 minutes):

o    Introduce the topic of the five senses, asking students to identify them in their mother tongue.

o    Match English words with pictures of sense organs.

o    Show a video (e.g., My Five Senses) and confirm or correct the matching activity.

2.    Task Cycle (50 minutes):

o    Divide the class into five groups, each representing one of the senses.

o    Have each group complete a worksheet related to their assigned sense, exploring the environment to describe living or non-living things using sensory adjectives.

o    Focus on language structures, such as gender-neutral pronouns (e.g., it) and the order of adjectives (e.g., quantity, size, color).

o    Play an interactive game where students ask and answer questions about objects in the classroom or school.

3.    Post-task (15 minutes):

o    Use a summative assessment where students check boxes or write short descriptions about objects they encounter based on sensory information.

Learner Role: Students are expected to take an active role in their learning, engaging with the language in practical ways. This approach promotes motivation, as students see the immediate relevance of what they are learning.

Teacher Role: The teacher’s responsibilities include preparing lessons in detail, selecting appropriate activities, and monitoring student performance. During group work, the teacher circulates to provide feedback and ensure all students are engaged and participating.

Setting: The classroom will be organized to support different types of interaction: group work, whole-class instruction, and peer feedback. These varied interaction patterns ensure that students receive comprehensive language practice.

Conclusion

By implementing a CLIL-based unit, students will be able to communicate with peers from around the world, using both language and knowledge to express their ideas. CLIL supports the simultaneous development of content and language, equipping students with the skills needed to thrive in a globalized world. As such, the unit not only enhances linguistic abilities but also contributes to the students’ overall educational development, preparing them for future opportunities.

References

Nunan, D. (2004). Task-based language teaching. Cambridge University Press.

Willis, J. (1996). A framework for task-based learning. Longman.