English CLIL Programs: Teaching Geography in English or English in Geography?
Short Title: CLIL geography and English

Date: 20-Nov-2025 - 21-Nov-2025
Location: Paris Nanterre, France
Contact: LEROUX Agnès
Contact Email: [email protected]

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Discourse Analysis; Language Acquisition; Psycholinguistics

Submission Deadline: 30-Jul-2025

The aim of this conference is to bring together specialists in didactics, linguistics, geography, and second language acquisition, as well as teacher trainers and secondary school teachers to discuss the teaching and learning of English as a Second Language (ESL) using a CLIL approach, in geography classes more specifically.

The CEFR (2001, 2018) promotes an action-oriented perspective for the teaching of foreign languages and considers learners as social actors. This approach aims to engage students in tasks that include collaborative and interactive work. However, task-based teaching is not familiar to all geography teachers, particularly regarding language practice and the key role it plays in the construction of knowledge. Because of a lack of specific training in CLIL, a large proportion of students use their mother tongue during talk-in-interaction, which prevents them from building solid skills in the foreign language.

In France, CLIL programmes do not have a dedicated syllabus that defines the academic expectations. As a result, teachers have to design their curriculum according to their own class objectives, both in terms of knowledge or skills. French-geography differs from the way geography is dealt with in English-speaking countries, not only historically speaking, but also in the way it has developed its arrays of interest and concepts (Hancock, 2002; Claval, 2008; Gintrac, 2012). For example, concepts widely used in French school geography do not necessarily have an equivalent in English, or do not occupy the same place within the Anglophone discipline (Gonin, 2024). These considerations raise questions about the content taught in DNL geography.

This conference is taking place as research carried out in Europe, and looking into primary, secondary and higher education, generally shows positive results from CLIL teaching in terms of learner motivation and academic results. However, several studies have pointed out that the apparent “CLIL effects” are perhaps exaggerated, and partly attributable to the selection of pupils and students that are already high achievers and highly motivated (Sylvén, 2010), as is the case in France. Large-scale studies in Spain have reported an increase in language skills for all CLIL groups (Pérez Cañado, 2018), but research on that topic is still scarce in France.

We are expecting presentations which could, for example, provide some answers to the following questions:
- What are the characteristics of the specialised language of geography, in French and in English? Who should teach it and how?
- What classroom language practices are specific to these CLIL programmes in geography?
- How do the concepts taught in geography help students understand the differences between English and French perspectives on global issues?
- Which approach to geography should be favoured when teaching it in English? The French approach or the approaches of the English-speaking world? How do these approaches differ?
- How do teachers interact and adapt their classroom discourse to support linguistic and conceptual learning in English?
- How do the students’ language skills develop as a result of CLIL teaching?
- What are the synergies and differences between EFL lessons and CLIL lessons? How can the integrated construction of knowledge be scaffolded?
- Is there such a thing as CLIL didactics?

These questions and themes are not, of course, exclusive. While the French context is the starting point for our questions, proposals relating to other education systems around the world are welcome.