TAKING INTO ACCOUNT MY PERSONAL TEACHING CONTEXT, WHAT WOULD BE THE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF USING THE ELP WITH MY GROUPS?

The  European Language Portfolio is a personal document  that every student can fill in with their improvements in learning English.  My subject is Development Community  and we could use it.

Now, I am going to explain the advantages and disadvantages about this educational linguistic resource.

ELP has some advantages.  I consider  that students could be aware  of their progress every day. It´s a motivational way to learn in the CLIL method. The three components of the ELP are:

-          Language Passport:  it is recorded formal qualifications, and I can see the learning individual process of English and the student as well. There are three types of assesment: self, teacher and official exams. This resource is more formal and it would be related to academic issues.

-          Language Biography: can be interesting to record different social experiences that students can show about themselves. For example, have conversations with foreign people with surveys, interviews…etc. We can create fascinating experiences among people from different nationalities and cultures.

-          My language dossier: in this section, pupils can introduce the differents assignments. For example, in my subject related to participation in different events in the community: social meetings, discussion social- groups,  volunteering in an association, participation in different   cultural activities…etc.

With regards to disadvantages, we can see different problems that it could happen if I use the ELP: In the first place, I can say that in order to develop this tool,  you need time to show, explain and use it.  However,  teachers always need time   to make students   get the objectives.  It´s obvious that we want to use this tool, it´s necessary to explain how to use it and explain how it will be used throughtout school year. We need to balance  what it is more important to pupils according to time, pupils features and achievements.

To sum up, it´s crucial when using the CLIL methodology to find resources to motivate our students.   ELP is one of those key elements that can help us to do it.