Innovation in Language Learning

The present study explores a teaching unit in the English classroom using a CLIL approach in a Spanish Secondary School located in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. In particular, the lessons focus on Twilight, the vampire-based fantasy romance novel written by the American author Stephanie Meyer and aimed at young adults. The novel tells a period in the life of Bella, a teenage girl who moves to Fork, Washington, and falls in love with a 104-year-old vampire called Edward Cullen. Although many students had not read the novel, most of them knew about the story or had seen the film, so they were familiar with the work selected.

The inclusion of the literary text in the foreign language classroom allows the students to learn not only the foreign language but also its culture, and helps them imagine what life is like in the country they are reading about. It is also a true and valuable material that has not been created for a teaching purpose and so the students can get used to the forms and conventions of the written mode.

The CLIL approach is useful for the development of the intercultural competence through the reading of different passages of Twilight by means of a content-based methodology. CLIL results adequate for the design of activities that promote the acquisition of both the English language and the communicative and intercultural skills. As a result, the communication in the foreign language can be more important than the grammar knowledge. This methodology also fosters the cultural conscience and the fluency in the second language. The usage of current topics such as types of family, types of food, free-time activities, dating someone, and the prom party, among others, supports the capacity to combine the linguistic and intercultural learning. According to Marsh (2000), the importance of this approach lies in the fact that the learning of contents in a different language can affect our conceptual mapping, modifies our way of thinking and widens our cultural horizon. Furthermore, the intercultural speaker can acquire the cultural knowledge and sociocultural behaviour of other communities that should promote an open attitude toward the cultural diversity.

Twilight has already been exploited in class and numerous lesson plans have been proposed. In this paper, I have worked with several activities that promote the intercultural competence. They have been classified into pre-reading, while-reading, post-reading, and creative reading activities. They have included, for example, short videos from the film that illustrate a passage from the book, working on the vocabulary, describing a character and writing an essay about one of the themes analysed. The evaluation has been made through the observation in class, the correction of the activities and a final questionnaire that assesses their intercultural competence.