Abstract:

The trends of modern society are evolving relatively quickly. Of course, the education system must also respond to this rapid development and constant change. This need for training in line with current trends and labour market requirements concerns not only pupils and students but also adults in lifelong learning.

Although the current long-term trend is the development and use of information and communication technology in all areas of everyday life, there are other circumstances that affect society. Thanks to far better opportunities for travel and movement of the population, there is a possibility and maybe even a need to travel for work or study abroad. For many people, however, the language barrier can be a limiting factor. As part of foreign language teaching in schools, preparation is carried out for the most common topics and situations of everyday life. However, there is seldom a sufficient amount of time devoted to specialised topics in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology etc. The specialised vocabulary of these subjects then remains neglected and at a low level, which can lead to fear of studying or specifically focused work abroad. The Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach, i.e. the integration of a foreign language and a non-language subject, seeks to eliminate this problem.

The research presented in this paper focused on the influence of the integration of mathematics and the English language. A quantitative approach was used for the research because the level of knowledge of students was verified. Experiment was chosen as the research method. To achieve a higher level of objectivity, the technique of factor rotation was used, which enables work with two potentially unbalanced groups of subjects.

The experiment was carried out during one semester at the Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Education, Palacký University in Olomouc. The experimental and test group was composed of students of the first year of full-time study of Teaching at the 1st Level of Elementary School within the subject Repetitorium of Mathematics. Students of the field Teaching at the 1st Level of Elementary School were chosen for several reasons. One of the main reasons is the growing tendency to use the CLIL approach in elementary school teaching, which has been shown in previous research. Another reason for choosing this target group for the implementation of the experiment was that they are potential future teachers, who should encounter modern trends in teaching and should have the opportunity to try them and assess whether the individual approaches, methods etc. can be used in their future practice.

The following hypotheses were examined in the experiment:
H1: The integration of the English language into the teaching of mathematics using the CLIL approach has a positive effect on the success rate of students in solving mathematical tests in English.
H2: The integration of the English language into the teaching of mathematics using the CLIL approach has a positive effect on the success rate of students in solving mathematical tests in the Czech language.

The results of the experiment are presented in the full text of the paper.

Keywords:

CLIL, Mathematics, English, experiment.