Teaching Music in English: A Content- Based Instruction Model in Secondary Education

Lucía Bellés-Calvera

Authors

Lucía Bellés-Calvera Author Universitat Jaume I http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1329-6395

Keywords:

instructional programs, educational policies, secondary education, music, foreign language instruction

Abstract

Over the past few years, there has been a growing interest in the teaching and learning of several languages in an attempt to generate multilingual education opportunities, particularly in Europe. In response to the demands of our globalized society, Content-Based Instruction (CBI), which has also been referred to as “immersion and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programs,” emerged as a teaching approach that combines the learning of curricular contents and the communicative competence in the target language. This study was carried out at a public high school set in a Spanish bilingual community, where music is taught through a CLIL approach in English class. The purpose of this paper is to examine how students value their music lessons in English and to check the adequacy of teaching music as a subject in English. To achieve this goal, materials adapted to their level of proficiency and a final questionnaire were designed. Results indicate that students are satisfied with this proposal, since they consider these music lessons to be easier than the regular ones. Not only did they enjoy being exposed to English in these music lessons, but a considerable number of students would also like to take a CLIL program in the near future. Pedagogical implications to this CBI model account for the development of learners’ autonomy, the use of audio-visual aids and further research in bilingual and multilingual regions overseas.

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Author Biography

Lucía Bellés-Calvera, Universitat Jaume I

Lucía Bellés Calvera holds a MA in in Secondary Education, Vocational Training and Language Teaching. She graduated in English Language and Linguistics in 2016 at Universitat Jaume I in Castelló. She has visited other countries and universities’ as an undergraduate and postgraduate student, such as the University of Southampton in the UK and Freiburg in Germany.

In 2015 she was awarded a departmental collaboration grant by the Spanish Ministry of Education, which allowed her to develop her final dissertation project entitled ICTs Implementation in the English Pronunciation Classroom: The Case of Voki. Likewise, in 2017 she got a research grant, thereby working with department of Historia y Patrimonio at Universitat Jaume I. Her main tasks had to do with the classification of archeological and heritage resources as well as with their translation into the English language.

She has also collaborated in the organization of different academic events As a member of the organising committee, as in CLIL applied to Secondary and Higher Education in Multilingual Contexts and ESP and EAP in Spain: New Horizons, among others. She was awarded two Ernest Breva awards for academic excellence, as well as an Outstanding Graduate Achievement Award at the end of the degree.

She is currently a PhD student in the Languages, Literature and Translation programme offered by Universitat Jaume I. Her research interests focus on applied linguistics, the acquisition of foreign languages, English for Specific Purposes and English for Academic Purposes, the implementation of ICTs in the EFL classroom as well as Content-Based Instruction in the Humanities.

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