3C TIC. Cuadernos de desarrollo aplicados a las TIC. ISSN: 2254-6529
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1. INTRODUCTION
The incorporation of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of
Europe, 2001) into the linguistic reality of the Valencian region, which shares a co-ocial language,
has led to a plurilingual approach (Cenoz & Gorter, 2013; Cummins, 2007; Esteve, et al., 2015;
García & Sylvan, 2011) in the curriculum in recent years. The reality of the classroom includes the
coexistence and use of the two ocial languages, as well as a foreign language. According to García
and Sylvan (2011), ‘we must learn to teach individuals within multilingual classrooms’ (p. 386). In
order to succeed in additional language teaching, in this case English, the most helpful resource has
become the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach, in which one or more
subjects or parts of a subject are taught in a dierent language to the student’s language (Coyle,
2007; Marsh, et al., 2012).
As part of teacher training in the Education degrees of the University of Alicante students can
do a course on CLIL. In this course CLIL is not only dened and its core features are presented,
but students are also provided with guidance in CLIL methodologies, pedagogies and practices.
Once they graduate, they will be teaching pre-primary and primary pupils, hence, there lays the
importance of correctly grasping the essentials of this new teaching paradigm. The focus of this
study with our Education degree students was to work with the CLIL 4-C wheel model (Coyle,
2002) specically on cognition as “CLIL should cognitively challenge learners - whatever their
ability. It provides a setting rich for developing thinking skills in conjunction with both basic
interpersonal communication skills (BICS) and cognitive-academic language prociency (CALP)”
(p.28). This importance of cognitive engagement and development is a key issue identied by
many researchers such as Hakuta, Ferdman and Díaz (1986), Puchta and Williams (2011),
and Shakkour, (2014) among others. The aim was for students to gain a deeper insight into
the cognition domain related to critical, creative thinking, linked to the higher order thinking
skills (HOTS) as opposed to lower order thinking skills (LOTS) according to Krathwohl’s (2002)
revision of Bloom’s taxonomy.