Juliane Kriesmann
Europäisches Gymnasium – Bertha-von-Suttner, Berlin, 2013
Bi-/
Multilingual
staff !!!
?
PROBLEM /
CHALLENGE
Bi-/Multilingualism leads to a
greater potential for
multicompetence, creativity and
innovation.
1 The Contribution of Bilingualism to Creativity
and Multicompetence
1.1 The Flexible Mind
1.2 The Problem-Solving Mind
1.3 The Metalinguistic Mind
1.4 The Learning Mind
1.5 The Interpersonal Mind
2 Added Value – The Quality CLIL Potential
2.1 Quality CLIL
2.2Towards Quality CLIL
2.3 Added Value – The CLIL Potential
3 Conclusion
4 Challenge
The Creative &
Innovative Mind
Bilingualism increases cognitive flexibility,
adaptability and the capacity to think.
The flexible mind:
 offers alternative ways of perceiving the surrounding world
 is one which can adapt itself to the demands of different
situations
 is a multicompetent mind
 gains energy from ‘creative tension’
Result: Different ways of thinking enhance the potential for
creativity.
Bilingualism increases the ability to control attention.
The problem-solving mind:
 can separate important from irrelevant information
 can separate distracting alternatives which interfere with
thought
 determines planning and categorising
 has higher concept formation skills
 can analyze information
Result: Bilingualism has an impact on creative problem-solving
competencies.
Bilingualism increases the awareness of language as
a tool for thinking and communication.
The metalinguistic mind:
 analyzes how language is used to achieve specific goals
 identifies ambiguity in communication
 shows:
- improved reading skills
- increased phonemic awareness
- sensitivity in interpersonal communication
- an increased ability to ‘go beyond the words’
Result: Language awareness gives the potential for enriched
information processing.
Bilingualism increases the memory function of the
brain.
The learning mind:
 shows a functional plasticity & changes in the brain’s
electrical activity
 has an increased ability to build up new knowledge
 is more efficient in retaining, organizing, storing and
retrieving information
Result: Bilingualism has a great impact on constructing new
knowledge (= creative process) and learning in general.
Bilingualism increases interpersonal communication
awareness and skills.
The interpersonal mind:
 understands and responds to the communicative needs of
others
 possesses interactional competence in communication
 possesses contextual sensitivity
 differentiates languages in sensitive ways
Result: Multi-skills in interpersonal interaction can affect the
potential of creativity.
Bilingualism results in the expansion of certain
types of human potential:
 the potential of creativity
 thinking
 learning
 problem-solving
 communicating
Bilingualism opens up forms of added value which
go beyond the languages themselves and lead to
creativity, higher order thinking and multicompetence.
• Subject-Specific
Knowledge
•Awareness
• Knowledge
• Skills
•Empathy
CONTENT
•Learning skills
•Literacies
COGNITION
•Learning styles
•Study skills
•Higher order thinking
•Multiple intelligences
CULTURE
COMMUNICATION
•
•
•
BICS
(Basic Interpersonal
Communication Skills)
•
CALP(Cognitive/Academic
Language Proficiency)
Input
 meaningful, authentic, challenging, multi-modal
Tasks
 student interaction
 authentic communicaton
 subject specific study skills
 higher order thinking
Scaffolding
Output
 cross-cultural communication
 fluency, accuracy, complexity
 BICS ⇒CALP
Figure: CLIL Core Elements, O. Meyer , 2010





Raising linguistic competence and confidence
Promoting higher order thinking
Raising expectations – raising motivation
Developing a wider range of skills
Raising awareness: cultures and global
citizenship
Result: Bilingualism has the potential to play a key
role in responding to challenges of the
present and future.
Competence-building through lifelong learning is of
acute significance because of the speed of change in our
societies.
The major future challenge in the educational
field is how to reform our learning systems to
prepare our young people for



jobs that do not exist yet
using technologies that have not been invented yet
solving problems that haven’t been identified yet
European Commisson (2009): Multilingualism and Creativity. Towards an Evidencebase – Compendium Part I, Europublic, Brussels
Meyer, Oliver (2010): Towards Quality-CLIL: Successful Planning and Teaching
strategies, Puls, p.11-29
Meyer, Oliver (2011): Quality CLIL Matrix, Seminar Material