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Article published In:
10th Anniversary Celebration
Edited by Pádraig Ó Duibhir and Laurent Cammarata
[Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education 10:2] 2022
► pp. 230–264

Thematic patterns, Cognitive Discourse Functions, and genres

Towards an Integrative Model for CLIL

| Guangzhou Medical University
| Simon Fraser University

As CLIL is developing into an established discipline, it is timely to deepen the theorizing of integration of content and language, particularly in CLIL assessment. To illustrate the challenges, a representative example of a high-stakes CLIL biology assessment task in Hong Kong will first be presented. An Integrative Model for CLIL will then be proposed and applied to illuminate the demands of the assessment task and diagnose a sample student performance. The Integrative Model is developed by integrating genre and register theory (Martin & Rose, 2008), Cognitive Discourse Functions (Dalton-Puffer, 2013), thematic patterns theory (Lemke, 1990), Concept-and-Language-Mapping (CLM) Approach (He & Lin, 2019) and translanguaging/trans-semiotizing theories (Garcia & Li, 2014; Lin, 2019). To further illustrate the utility of the Model, a range of possible assessment-for-learning (Black et al., 2003) CLIL task examples designed by the authors will be presented. The article will conclude with implications for CLIL pedagogy and assessment.

Keywords: thematic patterns, Cognitive Discourse Functions (CDFs), genres, CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), CLIL assessment, translanguaging, trans-semiotizing, multimodalities
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.An illustrative example of a high-stakes CLIL biology assessment task
  • 3.Towards an Integrative Model for CLIL: Integrating existing theories
    • 3.1Thematic patterns and “concept” learning
    • 3.2Cognitive discourse functions (CDFs)
    • 3.3Genres, registers and curriculum context
  • 4.Application of the Integrative Model: Analysis of the demands of the CLIL biology assessment task and diagnosis of the sample student essay performance
    • 4.1Understanding the overall requirements of the assessment task
    • 4.2Applying the Integrative Model to analyze the demands of the assessment task
      • 4.2.1Developing a thematic pattern map informed by content specialists’ perspectives and the Integrative Model
      • 4.2.2The demands of the assessment task illuminated through the thematic pattern map
      • 4.2.3A more well-formed essay delineating the thematic patterns, CDFs and genre features
    • 4.3Diagnosing the performance of the sample student essay
      • 4.3.1How the student essay performance fares from the perspective of the Integrative Model
      • 4.3.2Putting content specialists’ comments in perspective through the lens of the Integrative Model: Two levels of challenges revealed
    • 4.4The contribution of the Integrative Model for CLIL
  • 5.Designing formative, assessment-for-learning tasks in CLIL
  • 6.Coda
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 3 November 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jicb.21024.wu
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