The Climate Connection - Episode 4: Where there's a CLIL there's a way

The Climate Connection series overview

The Climate Connection is a ten-part podcast series from the British Council which explores the relationship between the climate crisis and language education.

Across the ten episodes, we’ll hear from a wide range of leading practitioners working in the sector – teachers, trainers, researchers, publishers and authors. We’ll travel from Colombia to China, Moldova to Mali, and Palestine to Poland in our quest to share what’s happening at the cutting edge of climate action in language education.

In partnership with the Oxford English Dictionary, we’ll also learn more about the origins of climate-related language, in both English and other languages. 

Episode 4 overview - Where there's a CLIL there's a way

Teaching materials are the focus of episode 4, specifically how we can maintain the right balance between content and language.

To begin with, Aleksandra Zaparucha guides us through the world of CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), a pedagogical approach which successfully combines these two components. Linda Ruas and Owain Alexander continue this conversation by talking about their websites (Easier English Wiki and ELT Sustainable) which provide hundreds of free-to-use lesson plans on climate-related issues.

When writing such materials, using the right language is important – and so in this episode, The Green Glossary focuses on the importance of connotation, using the difference between ‘climate change’ and ‘climate crisis’ as a starting point.

In 'From the Field', we visit the coastal city of Gabes in Tunisia, where we discover how one school is not only directly involving itself in environmental clean-up campaigns of the heavily-polluted beaches, but is using the waste materials they find to learn English.

Show notes

Each episode contains downloadable show notes. These include the following:

• Information about the interviewees and the 'From the field' section of the podcast,
• The 'Green glossary', kindly provided by Oxford University Press, with links to definitions of key vocabulary in the Oxford English Dictionary
• Ideas for how you could use the podcast in your teaching
• Bonus material

How to listen or subscribe to the podcast

You can listen and subscribe to the podcast in the following ways:

1. Download the episode below
2. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts - just search for 'The Climate Connection' and subscribe, or paste the RSS feed URL below in to your podcast platform: https://feeds.captivate.fm/the-climate-connection/
3. Listen on Apple Podcasts
4. Listen on Google Podcasts
5. Listen on Spotify

This episode is produced for the British Council by Chris Sowton and Kris Dyer

See other episodes in this series