Incident-Based Tasks In Clil Settings

Abstract

The article is devoted to advanced Master Degree students’ extrinsic and intrinsic motivation when learning a foreign language within Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) settings. The author analyzes students’ motivation and anxiety for a task from the point of its design, the dopamine and the opioid systems, the input-output aspect, heuristic and algorithmic procedures, and autonomy provided. Considering scientific publications reviewed, the author demonstrates a novel idea for Content and Language Integrated Learning – professionally-oriented incident-based tasks. An example of an incident-based task for Master Degree students majoring in management is given, its processing plan is provided. Being based on the same key principles, the novel tasks proposed are relevant to Content and Language Integrated Learning. Analysis of the results of the pedagogical experiments conducted to check the hypothesis of the incident-based tasks efficiency is given and discussed. The findings show that incident-based tasks stimulate students’ anxiety and motivation in accordance with the dopamine and the opioid systems effects. The author concludes that the incident-based tasks not only stimulate experienced students’ motivation and anxiety, but also contribute to their personal qualities and professional skills development. The idea behind enables Incident-based tasks implementation when working with experienced students of different majors.

Keywords: CLILforeign language competenceinternet-basedprofessionally-orientedprofessional discourse

Introduction

According to current Russian Federal Educational Standards, future Masters of Sciences are to be ready for intercultural communication and be competent enough to solve professional problems in a foreign language of their choice (Federal Educational Standard, 2015). This requirement calls for innovation in the sphere of education to help students simultaneously master professional content and level of language proficiency. Therefore, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) becomes relevant to the educational context concerned (Dashkina & Fyodorova, 2017; Kogan, Khalyapina, & Popova, 2017).

Requiring applied knowledge, CLIL is a key to a more advanced and sophisticated level of expertise. Even setting greater challenges to teachers by its purpose-designed tasks, CLIL, nevertheless, is becoming more and more popular, since it is based on a “two-for-the-price-of-one” idea (Bruton, 2013, p. 588), which is especially relevant within the nowadays limited number of in-class hours.

For students a CLIL class is definitely more complicated than any traditional learning, because it requires cognitive flexibility, involvement and constant focus. According to researchers, success of CLIL settings is dependent on such students’ qualities, as “prior achievements, general cognitive abilities, motivation” (Dallinger, Johnmann, Hollm, & Fiege, 2016, p. 23). We suppose that those students, who have the characteristics mentioned, are not only “able to deal with more difficult tasks” (Roussel, Joulia, Tricot, & Sweller, 2017, p. 3), but can become even more motivated and skilled by the cognitive load they are exposed to.

Problem Statement

Motivation is a key component for language learning especially when it is a CLIL class for experienced Master’s students with high level of language proficiency and expertise in the field of their major. Even considering the fact that CLIL replaces students’ bad attitude to any of the disciplines included in a CLIL setting with “a feel good attitude” (Chostelidou & Griva, 2014, p. 2170) motivation and anxiety factors should nevertheless be taken into special account.

Investigations prove that there are two types of motivation –intrinsic and extrinsic or integrative and instrumental depending on the origins (Coyle, Hood, & Marsh, 2010). This raises such questions as: what does the type of motivation depend on? Which type is preferable? What is a necessary prerequisite for either extrinsic or intrinsic motivation?

For example, decades ago when computers and the Internet were less widespread and rarely used in education, a computer-based task stimulated motivation. Nowadays, computers and the Internet are considered ordinary tools and cannot boost students’ motivation and anxiety (Almazova & Kogan, 2014). Thus, in terms of an internet-based task more attention should be paid to the task itself – its major idea, content included and design. To accomplish this, the nature of motivation is to be analyzed and considered.

Research Questions

Purpose of the Study

Taking everything mentioned above into account, we have developed and successfully implemented a computer-based method, called the Incident (Tsimerman, 2017). Being one of the types of situation analyses technology, the Incident nevertheless differs from role-playing or case-study dramatically. Compared with case-study, the Incident does not include detailed information on the issue under analysis (Panfilova, 2009). Since our target audience is Master Degree students majoring in management we have developed incidents based on the students’ professionally-oriented content.

The students receive a short coherent text, in our case a concise history of a company that went bankrupt or had some problems with the law. In order to boost students’ anxiety the text should not include any information on the reasons of the company’s failure. For better understanding of the idea one of the incident-based tasks represented in the Unit Business Ethics in our textbook Content and Language Mastering for Management Students (Tsimerman, 2018) is given below:

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Incident-based tasks correspond with the conclusions we have drawn based on the scientific research on task design analyzed, as:

1. They can be accomplished heuristically due to the following aspects:

- it’s not necessary to follow the links order given in the task to get the information needed;

- being experienced learners, Master Degree students can either scan the articles or read for gist;

- if interested students can use the autonomy provided and find any additional information themselves.

2. The content included is interesting for the teacher’s target audience:

- the content is real and shows real examples of executives’ flawed actions or inactions, bad strategy, etc. This fact stimulates students’ attention to details, helps them “walk in someone’s shoes”, learn from someone’s mistakes or demonstrate own experience and knowledge;

3. Incident-based tasks do stimulate the dopamine system, because:

- they stimulate such brain functions as: thinking, mood, motivation, wanting, seeking;

- they are aimed at gaining reward and therefore boost students’ desire for the information needed;

4. Incident-based tasks do stimulate the opioid system, because:

- the search carried out will bring results and, therefore, satisfy the desire for the information;

- the search carried out will help students demonstrate their competence in the field of their major and, thus, assist their self-affirmation.

The Incident method is relevant to CLIL as it is built on the same key principles (Coyle et al., 2010, p. 42):

• “Content matter is not only about acquiring knowledge and skills, it is about the learner creating their own knowledge and understanding and developing skills” – incident-based tasks teach students how to collect and analyze the information, choose the data relevant to the issue and ignore some unimportant facts. Working with incidents means rational data search and its further implementation to dwell upon the matter, therefore, using the target language “for knowledge construction” (Dalton-Puffer, 2007, p. 65).

• “Content is related to learning and thinking. To enable the learner to create own interpretation of content…” – the fact that the incident is real allows students to learn from someone’s mistakes, draw conclusions, imagine themselves experts and apply theoretical knowledge to practice.

• “Thinking processes (cognition) need to be analyzed for their linguistic demands” – Considered from the point of Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001), Incident-based tasks are complex and require lower-order and higher-order processing, in other words, more mental effort.

• “Language needs to be learned which is related to the learning context, to learning through that language, to reconstruct the content, and to relate cognitive process…” - the “Incident” helps students improve their level of foreign language proficiency, as it is based on real articles and requires reading, vocabulary acquisition and its later cognitive implementation when writing an essay on the matter or discussing the incident in class, thus, the input-output aspect is demanding.

• “Interaction in the learning context is fundamental to learning…” – incident-based tasks are complex and require in-class and out-of-class settings. In-class setting is devoted to pair or group work on the matter, which puts interaction at the core.

• “…Intercultural awareness is fundamental to CLIL” – in order to correspond with this principle, incident-based tasks are to be based on situations that took place abroad. The Incident represented in the article is devoted to a Japanese company. When working with the task, students get to know particular details of the country’s regulations, law, national mentality, etc.

• “CLIL is embedded in the wider educational context…and therefore must take account of contextual variables…” – the idea of the task can be applied when working with students of different majors, for example, we have also developed such tasks for Master degree students majoring in Civil Engineering, and the tasks proved their efficiency. It’s crucial to note, that incident-based tasks should be used when working with experienced students, preferably with Master Degree students, who are able to manage the cognitive load, process the information and ready to demonstrate their expertise. Otherwise, students will need “well-designed pedagogical support” (Gablasova, 2014, p. 978).

Research Methods

To check Incident-based tasks efficiency and evaluate students’ motivation and anxiety, some pedagogical experiments were conducted. We hypothesized that Incident-based tasks would stimulate experienced learners’ motivation. Since we usually work with small groups (7-12 students), to get valid results there were several experimental groups and several control groups. All students were Master’s students majoring in management with the level of language proficiency B2-C1, aged 20-21. Total number of students in the experimental group was 75 and in the control group – 68.

Incident-based tasks were included when working with the experimental groups. The processing plan of the work with the incident-based tasks was as follows:

• the students read a short text on the issue considered (in-class setting; reading);

• the students thought about possible reasons for the company’s problems or failures, bankruptcy (in-class setting; pair or group work, discussion);

• the students followed the links that contained information and read real articles on that matter to find out the details (out-of-class setting; reading);

• the students thought about the ways the company could have avoided or managed the problems (out-of-class setting; writing);

• the students demonstrated professional knowledge and shared their ideas on the matter (in-class setting; discussion).

The students of the control groups were to read a long summary (around 1000 words) of the situation. Their texts contained all the information to understand the whole picture, which was later discussed. To evaluate students’ motivation and anxiety we observed the working process and polled the students of the control and experimental groups.

Surveys

To evaluate students’ motivation, general self-assessment and opinion on the work, a survey was conducted. The students of the experimental and control groups were to rank the statements (Table 01 ), where 1 was the lowest result. We calculated the arithmetic mean using the formulae (Sidorenko, 2003) represented in Figure 01 .

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The results obtained are shown in Table 01 .

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Findings

Statements 1, 2, 6, 9, 10 results indicate that incident-based tasks, even being based on the same information, outperform ordinary texts in terms of students’ motivation and anxiety stimulation. The statements aimed at content and language showings (3, 4, 5, 8) represent the fact that, both variants are more or less equal, with a bit better results of the incident-based tasks. Statement 7 results demonstrate that both groups enjoyed the final discussion on the matter; however, the showing of the experimental group is higher. We suppose that the reason for this result is connected with the fact that the students of the experimental group had more autonomy and experienced more responsibility while completing the task, since they were to find relevant information themselves.

Conclusion

The aim of this article was to demonstrate a novel task idea, which is relevant to CLIL. The dopamine and the opioid systems matters, as well as, CLIL theories considered helped develop a novel task design, which proved its efficiency. The research shows that Incident-based tasks have high potential in educational context, because they stimulate students’ motivation and anxiety not only by real situations they are based on, but also by the goal-oriented search required. Representing professional and student-centred content, incident-based tasks contribute to students’ professional skills development. Incident-based tasks can be applied in blended learning and e-learning, if modified accordingly.

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