Abstract:

European Higher Education Area is based on the development of key competences for lifelong learning [1] many of them can be developed in a Computer Network course. The authors have special experience in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), which refers to any dual-focused educational context in which a foreign language is used as a medium in the teaching and learning of non-language content [2]. For applying CLIL, it is necessary to develop new methodological and teaching techniques that are arising among the bilingual teaching community.

As result of applying new CLIL methodologies the students not only acquire the second language competence, but also increase the performance at learning other competences and even at learning new concepts. Therefore the authors have decided to apply the same CLIL methodologies into a computer network course where all the contents are explained in the student’s mother language.

The aim of this study is to present a lesson planning procedure in a Computer Network classroom as well as a series of activities proposed to achieve a proper acquisition of content and competence integrated learning in a non-bilingual educational setting. We pretend to provide computer network professors with useful tools to develop their work successfully.

A planning template for computer network subjects will be presented. Additionally, a series of tasks that will evince the usefulness of multimodal resources to facilitate the acquisition of content knowledge and competence in university contexts will be shown. We will distinguish between a series of pre-tasks, aimed at allowing students to get familiar with the main contents and proceedings of the unit under study; a main task by which students will show their understanding of the unit contents; and finally, post tasks addressed to consolidate the knowledge acquired within the unit [3]. Furthermore some suggestions will be presented in order to get some ideas for improvement in accordance with the students’ point of view.

References:
[1] EHEA (European Higher Education Area). Viena-Bologna Policy Forum. March, 2010.
[2] Marsh, D. (2000) Using Languages to Learn and Learning to Use Languages. http://www.clilcompendium.com/1uk.pdf
[3] Lorenzo, F. (2008) Instructional discourse in bilingual settings. An empirical study of linguistic adjustments in Content and Language Integrated Learning. Language Learning Journal. 36 (1) 21-33.