Another platform and a changed context: Student experiences of developing spontaneous speaking in French through physical education

Abstract

This study highlights a complementary partnership between physical education and foreign language learning, endorsing the potential of an applied learning context as an alternative pedagogical platform. A pedagogic model of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) within physical education was adopted to explore the capacity for improving students’ spontaneous speaking in French. The study’s motivation was the 2016 changes to England’s General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) French specifications, which placed an increased emphasis on responding spontaneously in spoken French and sustaining communication in different situations. Students (n = 42) aged 13–14, soon to embark on GCSE French, were introduced to a 10-week handball scheme of work that included learning associated key French vocabulary and students communicating with each other and the teacher in French. Adopting case study methodology, data collection included student questionnaires, individual teacher interviews and student focus groups, analysed using inductive analysis and constant comparison. The physical education CLIL platform provided a learning context that appeared to support student perceptions of increased motivation and reduced anxiety, with 60% of students reporting that speaking French during physical education increased their confidence in speaking French aloud. Findings suggest the importance of an applied learning environment that emphasises working as a group, encouraging a willingness to take risks in spontaneous speaking, and decreasing sensitivity to negative judgement. A physical education-located CLIL model appears to offer learning experiences within the skill-based traditions of physical education beyond ‘learning to move’, providing a context for ‘moving to learn’ as an investment towards embodied learning.

Keywords

Content and language integrated learning spontaneous speaking applied learning risk-taking group work

Introduction

Physical education offers young people opportunities to develop an array of social dispositions and skills developed primarily through physical practice. This includes attributes such as cooperation, teamwork, empathy and personal responsibility (Bailey, 2008). In this sense the subject is unique as it does not take place in a ‘typical’ classroom, often requiring more socio-physical interaction than other curriculum subject areas (Graham, 2008) ‘when confined by classroom walls and seated in a chair’ (Kretchmar, 2006: 7).

Numerous studies (e.g. Armour and Harris, 2013; Bailey et al., 2009; Penney and Chandler, 2000) identify students’ perspectives of physical education as being about fun and enjoyment, competitive team games, skill development, health and social interactions. However, they lack ideas associated with educational purpose and value of the subject (Smith and Parr, 2007). This study demonstrates how physical education can purposefully engage with other curriculum subjects as a means to broader educational goals.

Delving more deeply into the aims that inspire definitions of physical education, Brown (2013: 22) articulates the discipline as education ‘in, through and about’ movement. The UK’s Association for Physical Education (2008: 10) emphasises ‘learning to move’: becoming more physically competent; and ‘moving to learn’: learning through movement and a range of skills and understanding beyond physical activity, such as cooperating with others. The concept of ‘moving to learn’ stands out as an understated feature of the discipline and more often than not is underdeveloped or assumed within current pedagogical practices. O’Connor (2018: 4) notes that ‘Physical Education should not be simply a monoculture of nationally popular performative games and sports that cater for the interests of the motorically talented without consideration of wider meaning’. The subject offers much scope in developing meaningful educational experiences beyond the practical and technical approach. Students can be guided in their movement experiences to emphasise emotional, practical, aesthetic and imaginative qualities (Brown and Payne, 2009). While these foundations strongly support an approach to physical education that prioritises meaningfulness, few teachers can articulate strategies or pedagogies they rely on or intentionally promote meaningful experiences for young people (Kretchmar, 2006). Ennis (2017) and Kretchmar (2007) advocate the intentional development of pedagogies and design of curricula that specifically prioritise meaningful engagement in physical education. It is fitting, therefore, to explore alternative pedagogies within physical education.

Content and language integrated learning in physical education

There appears to be significant potential for considering a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach through physical education. Salvador-Garcia and Chiva-Bartoll (2017: 1130) state that ‘the features’ of physical education make it ‘one of the target subjects for the application of CLIL’. Despite this, there is a sparsity in the literature in relation to its adoption as a pedagogic method. Much of the international literature reports on supporting students who are learning an additional language within physical education (e.g. Clancy and Hruska, 2005; Sato et al., 2019). From a limited canon, much of the reported research relies on a linguistic lens and little is specifically written from a practical or physical education perspective. This study attempts to address the gap in this area.

Previous studies focus on the teaching of English through a CLIL approach within physical education. For example, Fazio et al. (2015) consider CLIL as a new approach to develop the pedagogical perspective in the teaching of physical education through the concept of the four Cs: content, communication, culture and cognition. Coral and Lleixá (2016) report on teaching strategies that can improve spoken communication in a foreign language (English) and identify there is little in the literature to provide practical information for teaching a CLIL approach in physical education. Salvador-Garcia and Chiva-Bartoll (2017) explore the views of teachers in the Spanish context in relation to developing English in physical education through CLIL. They conclude by identifying a further need to explore the impact of CLIL on physical education through the views of students. Salvador-Garcia et al. (2018) present the perceptions of students on the use of CLIL in developing English competency in physical education and conclude that CLIL increased students’ participation and improved confidence towards speaking a foreign language.

This case study looks to build on and extend the current limited literature concerning CLIL in physical education. It does not attempt an empirical evaluation of the specifics of CLIL pedagogy. Rather, it explores and presents the student voice, based on student experiences of spontaneous speaking in French within a CLIL/physical education environment.

Context for the study

Graham et al. (2012) highlight the perceived difficulties of foreign language learning and that, in contrast, children consider physical education as more engaging and accessible. Both French and physical education are performative and visible in nature, involving public displays of learning. The University of Southampton’s ‘Score in French’ study, aimed at motivating boys (aged 11–13 years) through the use of football, reported increased enjoyment, engagement and motivation to study languages (McCall, 2011). Encouraged by such findings, this study extends recent research exploring ways of developing foreign language learning through physical education (Lamb, 2016).

This study’s stimulus was the 2016 changes to England’s General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) French specifications, which increased the emphasis on spontaneous speaking. The highest mark band requires ‘[e]xcellent exchange in which the speaker reacts naturally to the questions asked and has an air of spontaneity. Responds promptly and speaks with some fluency, though not necessarily with that of a native speaker’ (AQA, 2016).

A significant barrier to students learning a foreign language is situation-specific anxiety, known as foreign language anxiety (Horwitz, 2016). Therefore, exploring creative approaches to supporting students to speak spontaneously in French is timely. The aim of the study was to explore the potential for improving students’ spontaneous speaking in French through the pedagogical vehicle of CLIL. The medium selected for this was an introductory combined physical education and French handball scheme of work, adhering to Coyle et al.’s CLIL principles:

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is a dual-focused educational approach in which an additional language is used for the learning and teaching of both content and language. That is, in the teaching and learning process, there is a focus not only on content, and not only on language. Each is interwoven, even if the emphasis is greater on one or the other at a given time. (Coyle et al., 2010: 1)

Based on research endorsing CLIL as an alternative to traditional language education (De Smet et al., 2018), opportunities to develop competence in spontaneous speaking were integrated within the scheme of work. A further key determinant was guided by Muñoz’s (2002: 36) view that ‘learners’ motivation to learn content through the foreign language may foster and sustain motivation towards learning the foreign language itself’. At a time when it seems that the default cross-curricular learning position for physical education teachers tends not to extend beyond literacy and numeracy (Everley and Wild, 2013), this study is opportune in exploring the power of physical education to foster students’ spontaneous speaking in a foreign language.

Methodology

Design

A single case study was the focus for this mixed methods research, situated in a small, rural school (age range 5–16 years) in eastern England. In choosing the methodological approach of a case study, the focus of the research was on the student experience of developing spontaneous speaking in French through their physical education lessons. The authors were interested in how it may be possible to capture the complexity and distinctiveness of the experiences of the students. They also wanted to retain the nuance and subtlety of significant and telling detail relating to the student experience of a CLIL pedagogical approach within physical education. Definitions of case study focus on the importance of these elements. Stake (1995: xi) sees case study as ‘the study of the particularity and complexity of a single case, coming to understand its activity within important circumstances’. Yin (2018: 15) argues that the choice of case study enables an understanding of ‘a real-world case’ that involves ‘important contextual conditions’. These considerations were important in attempting to represent the student voice.

CLIL was adopted as a pedagogical tool to accord authority to the voices of students who had recently chosen to study GCSE French, with a view to capturing their perceptions of, and engagement with, spontaneous speaking in French during physical education lessons. A French teacher and a physical education teacher collaborated with the principal researcher to design a 10-week CLIL scheme of work introducing the new sport of handball, integrating physical education knowledge, skills and understanding with associated French vocabulary. The ‘content’ and ‘language’ objectives of the learning for students focused on handball skills, techniques, rules and game strategy, with associated French vocabulary based on the GCSE curriculum introduced through the following blended intended learning outcomes:

1. Develop handling and fundamental skills of handball, develop a range of basic vocabulary surrounding handball terminology, understand and use imperative commands;

2. Develop movement and coordination and develop understanding of modal verbs and use of the negative in relation to handball rules;

3. Develop and apply phases of play (fast break, extended break), develop understanding of question words and be able to ask and answer questions confidently;

4. Apply rules and phases of play to full-sided games and use past tense to evaluate and reflect on previous play and performance;

5. Develop defending skills and plan changes using future tense, based on reflections on previous performances;

6. Develop shooting techniques and plan changes, implementing new strategies using future tense based on reflections on previous performances;

7. Develop goalkeeping and combination play and plan changes, implementing new strategies using future tense, based on reflections on previous performances;

8. Apply skills and phases of play to a full-sided game and apply and use vocabulary and structures learnt in game play, coaching and officiating roles.

Formative teacher assessment took place through question and answer, reciprocal teaching and ‘show me’ strategies during lessons and whilst observing a handball tournament at the end of the 10 weeks, capturing evidence of learning against the scheme’s intended learning outcomes.

Participants

The Year 9 students (aged 13–14) were purposively selected (n = 42) and divided into two mixed gender classes for the lessons. They had recently chosen their GCSE options in preparation for moving into Year 10 the following year and had predominantly selected French (n = 30) to study as one of their GCSE examinations, with some (n = 12) choosing German or Spanish. During the physical education/French CLIL lesson each week students experienced new techniques of handball. In line with CLIL pedagogy, during the lesson they also learnt associated key French vocabulary and grammar, and were encouraged to respond to instructions delivered in French and to communicate with each other and the teachers in French. The study envisaged that by integrating French content and language learning within the physical education lesson, students’ confidence in spontaneous speaking skills would develop and, as a consequence, the experience could potentially ease the transition towards the demands of studying GCSE French. The climax of the scheme of work involved both classes combining to showcase their handball and French spontaneous speaking skills through a handball tournament. Students took part in managing, coaching and officiating their teams, whilst competing against all the other teams in a round-robin competition, culminating in an awards ceremony.

Data collection

Data collection involved a multi-method approach (MacPhail et al., 2003) of student questionnaires, individual teacher interviews and student focus groups (Kvale and Brinkman, 2009) conducted immediately after the concluding tournament. Students completed a paper-based questionnaire, piloted in a recent study exploring ways of fostering a passion for languages through the context of physical education (Lamb, 2016). They were asked to identify their gender and answer 11 questions (closed and open-ended) with ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘sometimes’, ‘prefer not to say’ and ranking options, with space to explain answers more fully. Questions asked for their views on practising speaking French during their classroom-based language lessons and practising speaking French during the physical education/French CLIL lessons. For examples of questions from the student questionnaires see Figures 1 to 3. This tool afforded students the opportunity to voice their opinions in a private and anonymous capacity, with the intent of facilitating honest answers.

Figure 1.

Questionnaire responses to the question ‘During French lessons in the classroom, which of these things do you like the best?’ Percentages may not total 100 due to rounding.

Figure 2.

Questionnaire responses to the question ‘Have you enjoyed speaking French in physical education lessons more than speaking French in classroom lessons?’ Percentages may not total 100 due to rounding.

Figure 3.

Questionnaire responses to the question ‘Has speaking French during physical education lessons made you feel more confident to speak French aloud?’ Percentages may not total 100 due to rounding.

Following the administration of the questionnaires, students were given the opportunity to talk further about their experience. Whilst all students chose to complete a questionnaire, not all chose to take part in the focus groups. Thirty-one students volunteered to participate in the focus groups (male n = 14, female n = 17). Six semi-structured focus groups took place, one after the other, conducted in the colour-coded teams in which students were organised for the tournament. The interviewer had not seen the questionnaire responses prior to conducting the focus groups. Each focus group lasted approximately 15 minutes and explored the students’ retrospective reflections on their experiences of engaging in their physical education/French CLIL lessons. Interviews were structured around 11 questions, with further questions posed when appropriate, in response to student answers (Patton, 2002). Initial questions replicated those asked in the questionnaire to give students opportunities to develop more detailed responses if they wished. The group structure allowed the students to reflect upon and discuss their views of the CLIL experience (Cohen et al., 2011).

Both teachers involved in delivering the physical education/French CLIL scheme of work were interviewed individually, immediately after the student focus groups, with each interview lasting approximately 30 minutes. The interviews were framed slightly differently according to the teacher’s role but were structured on a common set of questions focused on eliciting teacher perceptions of the impact of the study. Further questions were posed when appropriate, in response to their answers. Examples of questions included: ‘How did this work for you as the teacher?’ ‘How well do you think the students responded to the idea?’ ‘Did anything stand out for you in particular that surprised you?’

A Dictaphone iPad application was used to record focus groups and interviews. Focus group and interview data were transcribed verbatim using Word. Clean transcripts were adopted to focus on the content of what was said and to enhance the readability of the final account (Elliott, 2005). The use of questionnaires, student focus groups and teacher interviews as data collection techniques allowed for triangulation and contributed towards the accuracy and trustworthiness of the interpretations of the data (Curtner-Smith, 2002).

Data analysis

Analysis sought to elicit further understanding of the particularities and complexities of the student experiences of, reflections on and feelings towards the physical education/French CLIL process (Enright and O’Sullivan, 2012). Quantitative questionnaire data were collated and analysed manually using Excel software. With a 100% return rate, there were 42 student responses (male n = 19, female n = 23). In accordance with qualitative analytical procedures outlined elsewhere (e.g. Creswell, 2009; Hastie and Glotova, 2012), qualitative questionnaire responses and clean transcripts of teacher interviews and student focus groups were initially analysed manually through an open coding approach (Gibbs, 2007) by two researchers independently. Findings were cross-checked and cross-referenced within and across the data set to identify patterns of response. The researchers relied upon inductive analysis (Richards, 2006) and constant comparison (Cohen et al., 2011) to generate codes to group similar emergent themes. Singular cases were noted for exceptions among shared views.

Ethical considerations

Students, their parents/carers and the teachers provided written informed consent to take part in the study, adhering to the principal researcher’s university ethics procedures. Data have been anonymised with the following codes used after data excerpts. Questionnaire responses were initially identified by the respondent’s gender, to allow for further analysis by gender if considered to be significant, and questionnaire number (QB 1–19, QG 1–23). Focus group excerpts are identified by a three-letter code, which represents the original colour code of the concluding tournament teams used for the composition of the focus groups: red (FGR), blue (FGB), yellow (FGY), green (FGG), white (FGW) and purple (FGP). Both teacher interviews are identified as (TI) to maintain the anonymity of the individual teachers.

Findings and discussion

Findings demonstrated the success of the physical education/French CLIL handball scheme of work in engaging the students in spontaneous speaking. Sixty percent of the students reported that speaking French during their physical education lessons made them feel more confident in speaking aloud. The data yielded a number of important themes contributing to this increased confidence: a fear of getting things wrong when speaking the target language; a reduction in foreign language anxiety through working within an applied learning environment; the significance of working as a group; and an increased willingness to take risks within, and as result of, the CLIL activity. The physical education lessons fostered the opportunity to practise spontaneous speaking within a practical and less formal context. Moving away from the traditional languages classroom fostered a greater willingness to take risks in spontaneous speaking, which ultimately contributed towards students’ perceptions of increased self-confidence.

A fear of getting things wrong when speaking the target language

Students indicated a clear preference between the various pedagogical approaches (reading to oneself, reading out loud, writing, listening, speaking out loud) applied to learn French. The most liked activities in the French classroom were ‘reading to yourself’ (36%) followed by ‘writing’ (31%), as evidenced in Figure 1.

These preferences seemed largely to do with the activities allowing students to ‘hide’ within the classroom. For example:

Because I just like reading with no-one knowing if I mess it up. (QB10)

If I mess up people can’t hear it. (QB17)

I don’t have to worry about messing up when I read to myself. (QG3)

When writing it’s reasonably private – if I get something wrong no-one else knows and I’m relatively shy. (QG11)

As demonstrated in Figure 1, during French lessons in the classroom speaking out loud (at a combined 67% for ranking four and five) and reading out loud (at a combined 66% for ranking four and five) were the least favourite activities. A pattern of anxiety appeared to be a dominant factor in the students’ concerns about having to speak out loud in French, with a clear fear of ‘getting it wrong’, for example:

I can’t always pronounce words right. (QB1)

It’s bad when I get it wrong. (QB4)

Sometimes I feel people might laugh at me. (QB8)

No – because I mess it up. (QB10)

No – don’t like getting it wrong. (QB13)

Sometimes it is embarrassing. (QB14)

Sometimes I don’t feel confident. (QB2)

I don’t like being corrected in front of my peers. (QG16)

The feelings of anxiety towards foreign language learning bear strong similarities to studies exploring students’ attitudes towards physical education, which also requires students’ abilities and physical competences to be ‘on display’ (Carlson, 1995), the highly visible context differentiating those that ‘can’ and those that ‘can’t’ perform physically. Ennis (2000: 121) conveyed a strong message that ‘those who lack skilfulness attempt to avoid embarrassment by disengaging and refusing to participate’. Mosston and Mueller (1974: 101) note ‘the nature of the practical environment makes it very difficult for pupils to choose not to participate in the lesson; unlike a classroom that may allow a certain level of conscious non-engagement in tasks without necessarily being noticed’. Condon and Collier (2002) highlight the importance of student choice in activities, noting a willingness to risk failing or succeeding having chosen an activity, rather than being directed to do it. For some students physical education is an ordeal, with others not given opportunities because of a lack of natural sporting ability (Asbury, 2000). Similarly, Ennis et al. (1997: 52) examined situational and personal contextual factors contributing towards engagement in physical education, highlighting that ‘all participants reported a sense of fear and alienation in the school or class environment’.

Fear of failing in physical education may lead to ‘opting out’ and the preference to become a ‘bystander’, with students masking themselves alongside more skilled peers to avoid participation: ‘Participating incognito is a strategy that many students use to avoid humiliation’ (Webb and Pope, 1999: 43). Paradoxically, this study highlights how the physical education environment appears to have created a safe and non-judgemental learning environment where students were happy experimenting with their French vocabulary without fear of judgement or repercussions, preferring the physical education setting to that of the languages classroom. The physical education/French CLIL pedagogy provided a safe, authentic and situated learning environment. The practical context allowed for a tolerance of language variation and errors as part of the language acquisition process, what Brumfit (1984) refers to as guilt-free participation and Rampton (1999) sees as natural acquisition, acknowledged by one of the students:

In PE everybody is shouting French all over the place – it is a lot more fun than in the class. (FGW)

This echoes the thoughts of Heras and Lasagabaster (2015: 72) in that:

Students seem to feel more motivated to learn foreign languages, as they undergo less stress and anxiety in a learning environment in which the focus is not only on language forms but also on meaning and communication. CLIL helps to make the learning process more meaningful and less stressful.

A reduction in fear of getting things wrong when speaking the target language appeared to be very much influenced by the change in context, which provided a potential forum for a shift in motivation, stimulated further by the physical education/French CLIL pedagogy.

A reduction in foreign language anxiety through working within an applied learning environment

Meaningful physical education potentially fosters lifelong physical activity (Ennis, 2017). O’Connor (2018: 2) explores a pedagogy for ‘meaning making’ in physical education, emphasising the importance of moving beyond ‘a purely cognitive, technical or “fitness-as-an-outcome” approach’ in order to offer meaningful educational experiences. The physical education/French CLIL context allowed individual embodied meaning-making, which influenced levels of perceived language anxiety. When reflecting on this, Horwitz et al. (1986) draw parallels between language anxiety and three related performance anxieties: (a) communication apprehension; (b) test anxiety; and (c) fear of negative evaluation. Student perceptions of engaging in the physical education/French CLIL lessons suggested that the practical learning environment reduced these three performance anxieties. For example:

Communication apprehension: because you are playing a game you feel less self-conscious, caught up in the game, so no-one is critiquing you. (FGY)

Test anxiety: you can put sentences together way easier and if you get it wrong it doesn’t really matter because it’s not an actual French lesson so you’re not being marked on your French – you can shout across the pitch like no-one can hear you, it’s really fun. (FGG)

Fear of negative evaluation: we’re not just focusing on our French, we’re focusing on sport as well, so the pressure’s not put on you. (FGG)

Responding to the moment in ‘real time’ fostered spontaneity and a feeling of liberation for the students, as one pupil indicated:

You don’t have prepared answers – you have to think from your head – this definitely helps that kind of skill. (FGY)

The physical education/French CLIL environment facilitated what some students viewed as a ‘less formal’ (FGB), ‘practical’ (FGY) and ‘real-life’ (FGW) situation. This change to an applied learning context escalated opportunities for social learning (Vygotsky, 1978) whereby the interactive environment appeared to allow students to construct meaning as they engaged in spontaneous speaking with peers. Whilst the study did not delve explicitly into the depth of learning taking place, the findings suggest implicit benefits in terms of pupil perceptions of increased confidence, motivation and willingness to approach new learning challenges, benefits conducive to the physical education learning climate just as much as the language learning climate.

The teachers echoed a sense of decreased student inhibition and student willingness to contribute, inferring that the French classroom may be viewed as a ‘false environment’ (TI) and ‘all a bit staged’ (TI). This was an important acknowledgement by a teacher in endorsing the applied CLIL learning context as a potential forum for increased confidence in ‘language using’:

When they’re out playing they’re more free to use bits of language, say various things that they wouldn’t necessarily get to use in the classroom. I think it is good for them to speak French in another setting and do something physical and active as opposed to just doing French in a classroom. It’s giving them another platform to use their language. (TI)

What appears clear is that the practical learning environment of the physical education/French CLIL approach stimulated student enjoyment in developing their spontaneous speaking skills, as summarised in Figure 2. Figure 2 suggests a shift in enjoyment for the students through the applied CLIL learning environment, a positive finding given that much research concerning foreign language acquisition tends to focus on negative emotions such as foreign language anxiety (Horwitz, 2016).

For many students it was the spontaneity of having no time to think and the fast pace of the game, of shouting out the words, which enabled them to make progress in a way that ‘segregated’ (FGP) and ‘formal’ (FGW) classroom-based activities often do not allow. Tinning (2008: 26) noted how the social nature of physical education lessons helps promote the positive emotion of enjoyment in that ‘human movement is as much a social experience as a biological experience, it is as much emotion as it is sweat’. The organisational structure of the handball scheme of work and tournament emphasised the meaning and communication dimensions of its objectives. Contrary to Mehisto et al. (2008), who suggest finding a balance between language and content may be problematic, the handball scheme of work appeared to address any potential imbalance between the two, in this case in developing physical skills and spontaneous speaking. However, the capacity for impact on learning may be far broader. Students appeared to learn from each other, collaboratively bridging two subject disciplines.

The significance of working as a group

Group work is often an implicit and explicit part of physical education lessons (Lafont, 2012). Students’ accounts of their spontaneous speaking experiences during physical education indicate the importance of working as a group within any language learning environment, as these comments illustrate:

Everyone is in the same position, you feel more comfortable around them. (FGG)

It doesn’t really matter if you get it wrong because someone will tell you what to say. (FGW)

As a group if someone knows one word, they’ll say it and you’ll say another word and it builds to make up what you’re doing. (FGR)

The physical education/French CLIL environment facilitated a collaborative approach to language learning, where students embraced spontaneous speaking from a position of being a participator and a learner. Feeling safe within the group context appeared to remove the fear of criticism and ridicule, creating a culture of what Barker et al. (2015) see as learning through interaction. The findings suggested a shared understanding between students and teachers that created meaning within the lessons beyond the physical education norms of skill development. The lesson culture appeared to set out ‘expectation of shared participation and interaction with others’ (Thorburn and Stolz, 2017: 724). In contrast, in the French classroom some students voiced a sense of ‘segregation’ (FGP) as when the room is ‘laid out in tables there’s not as much help’ (FGP). The interactive nature of group activities in physical education appeared to remove this feeling of isolation, reinforcing social cohesion within the practical environment:

Some in the group are further educated in French so they’ll pick up more of it and they can help out the others and guide them what to do. (FGP)

You pick up certain things and then everyone knows all these things. (FGP)

It’s boosted my confidence with saying out loud because you’ve got to shout to your teammates where to go and where to pass to. (FGR)

These statements appear to add to the findings of Coral and Lleixá’s (2016: 124) research into the interaction between physical education and English as a foreign language. They reported that within a cooperative group situation, each member of the group strived for the success of all of the members of the group. The authentic interactions of this physical education/French CLIL design may facilitate ‘a shift from (traditional) teacher-centred practices to (more innovative) student-centred learning arrangements’ (Dalton-Puffer, 2011: 189). Casey and Goodyear (2015: 65), in an analysis of the literature on the pedagogy of cooperative learning, consider that in social learning ‘students motivated and encouraged each other to learn, accepting and supporting the idea that all students had a role to play in each other’s learning’, and this appeared to be an important aspect for the students and teachers:

It makes the PE a bit more interesting as well. I think the fact that you’re in a team as well, in a team environment – not isolated by yourself doing it definitely helps – you’ve got other people around you doing it so I think that helps as well. (FGY)

They’re working with people they wouldn’t tend to – who they wouldn’t naturally go to like asking for help and things like that. (TI)

These testimonies endorse how the physical education/French CLIL scheme of work appeared to foster a collaborative, student-led learning community, concurring with Casey and Dyson’s (2009: 178) view that students were able ‘not only to learn from the experiences in which they are involved but also to help their peers share in their learning’. Whilst putting students in groups does not automatically guarantee positive interactions (Rink, 2009), group work is the bedrock to physical education pedagogy. For example, reciprocal and student-centred teaching models such as teaching games for understanding (Butler and McCahan, 2005) and sport education (Siedentop, 1994) offer situated learning (Kirk and Macdonald, 2009) and group learning environments (Hastie, 1998) within physical education.

The broad corpus of literature reaffirms that the interactive and social nature of physical education fosters qualities such as leadership, teamwork and fair play, contributing to broader dimensions of meaning as part of curriculum learning (Webb et al., 2010). The physical education/French CLIL context possibly enhanced these broader dimensions for the students when navigating spontaneous speaking opportunities. Casey and Goodyear (2015: 65) consider that ‘affective learning in physical education and sport pedagogy is largely associated with psychological components of self-confidence, self-esteem, motivation and self-worth’ and it is here that the physical education/French CLIL model seems to have significance when considered against more traditional physical education pedagogical models:

And it has got people of different sporting ability working together. At the start I’d definitely say that it was one or two boys on each team that were taking control but as it’s gone on there’s been a couple of boys who aren’t quite there but they look up to those boys. And actually that’s really brought them on. Another positive for me has been a couple of girls who are not the key players but their French is there so it’s been good for them to have that boost and that confidence. (TI)

Kirk (2013: 983) argues that ‘Physical Education can legitimately aspire to achieve a wide range of educational outcomes for school-age children and youth but to do this it needs to take particular and different forms in contrast to its current and traditional form’. It is here, perhaps, that there are important and mutual benefits in the CLIL model for the teaching of physical education. The collaborative and cooperative approach adopted within this model also appears to allow for a reappraisal of the profile and importance of physical education in developing the affective learning of students across their whole school experience.

An increased willingness to take risks within, and as result of, the CLIL activity

It seemed the sense of social cohesion, of a learning ‘community’ (FGB) that was supportive, may have been created by the applied learning environment and potentially contributed towards a willingness to take risks. Mehisto et al. (2008: 174) consider that ‘Students will take these risks if they are rewarded for their attempts, whether they are successful or not. They will not take the risk if they are criticised or ridiculed for their efforts in using content or language’. However, the students acknowledged their enjoyment in engaging in an informal style of speaking (Nikula, 2007) within the practical lessons:

It’s like everyone’s involved; everyone’s trying their best to speak the French even though they might not get it correct but we all have a laugh together and we all try our best, so it brings everyone together. (FGP)

This seems to bear out Christie’s (2016: 86) view that ‘encouraging spontaneous language use can help improve learners’ levels of agency, risk-taking and creativity and can give them a feeling of communicative success’. Physical education provides a learning climate fostering interpersonal conversation through active learning skills (Cummins, 1991):

If you do it as a sport everyone’s just joining in, having fun. (FGP)

Student testimonies suggest support for Nikula’s (2010: 120) view that in CLIL lessons students have ‘more room for active engagement in classroom discourse than non-CLIL settings’.

The performative nature of the physical education environment can also conjure up negative emotions related to expectations of success in front of peers, and such fears as dropping the catch or being last. Despite such similarities in the visible nature of performance within the two subjects, however, the findings suggest that learning French through the physical education/French CLIL environment may dissipate some negative influences of foreign language anxiety, leading to positive learning experiences in spontaneous speaking:

And I suppose when they’re out playing they’re more free to sort of use bits of language, say various things that they wouldn’t necessarily get to use in the classroom. And more interaction as well with each other, so you know pupil to pupil speech is probably easier in a handball or game or PE setting than maybe it would be in a classroom. (TI)

You learn things from other people when they say it and then you’ll say it. Like I learned things that [name] said and I learned things that [name] said and then I could use them. (FGB)

Students described feelings of increased confidence and motivation together with greater willingness to take risks in spontaneous speaking. Sixty percent of the students reported that speaking French during the physical education lessons had made them feel more confident in their ability to speak French aloud, as depicted in Figure 3.

The practical physical education environment may influence student perceptions of increased confidence and empowerment through a reduction in the elements that influence foreign language anxiety found in the traditional classroom:

When you’re out there it’s not like anyone is really listening to you, they’re just getting on with what they’re doing – it doesn’t matter whether you get it right or wrong, whether you pronounce it right – so if you say ‘aller’ instead of ‘allez’ it’s not too much of a bad thing. (FGG)

It is possible that the physical education/French CLIL lessons presented ‘a relatively anxiety-free environment’ (Muñoz, 2002: 36) and a reduced perception of risk. Students talked about classroom lessons offering ‘thinking time’ prior to speaking aloud, resulting in increased anxiety. There is a sense of foreboding as their turn comes around. In contrast to this, the physical education/French CLIL context offered a different learning climate, with no waiting for turns, influenced instead by the fast-changing nature of the events:

You are able to say it in the moment. (FGP)

When you are having to play sport and make quick decisions you just sort of say it. (FGP)

It’s quite fast paced when you’re on the pitch so obviously you have to think fast – so if you want to say something you’ve got to say it fast so it comes out more naturally the more you do it. (FGG)

These comments also appear to support Coral and Lleixá’s (2016: 124) conclusion that ‘pupils seem to lose their inhibitions to use foreign language spontaneously for face-to-face interaction and participating in PE tasks’. It seems that the pace of the physical activity, rather than detracting from efforts of foreign language use, actually facilitates it. The pace of the game appears to be a potential characteristic in reducing the student perception of risk.

Coyle et al. (2010: 54) make the distinction between ‘language learning (often with an emphasis on grammatical progression) and language using (with an emphasis on the communication and learning demands of the moment)’. Features associated with ‘language using’, rather than ‘language learning’, seemed helpful for many students:

We’re caught up in the game – we’re not thinking ‘oh I’ve got to speak another language here’ – a couple of words every now and then but it isn’t heavy French. (FGY)

This student’s comment of not experiencing ‘heavy French’ articulates an idea that speaking French whilst playing sport is not really about developing expertise in ‘language learning’, a point also recognised by a teacher:

I’m not really hearing much French other than the key verbs…But when I finished the lesson I thought: ‘But we don’t talk in games – we don’t speak in sentences when we’re playing sport’. So that’s my thought. I’m asking them to do something which we wouldn’t do naturally anyway. (TI)

Christie (2016: 86) sees this reservation about ‘language learning’ as a key feature in accepting the nature of spontaneous speaking in the target language, and that learners ‘may not develop the use of complex utterances so fully since conversational language is often informal and predicated on the need to convey meaning as succinctly as possible’. Importantly, the study here highlights the focus on ‘informal’ and ‘conversational’ language promoted through the physical education/French CLIL activity:

I remember the words so much better than I do in the classroom because it is less formal so it’s not drilled into my brain – it’s more natural. (FGB)

Conclusion and further considerations

Exploring student perceptions of the physical education/French CLIL context revealed a positive influence on their feelings about motivation, self-confidence and anxiety, illuminating the potential of the practical environment for developing active spontaneous speaking in French. From the points of view of the students, the physical education/French CLIL learning environment appeared to promote higher levels of self-confidence and motivation together with lower levels of anxiety, which improved upon students’ initial low confidence in speaking out loud in the French classroom. The perception of increased confidence brought about by the applied and collaborative learning environment reduced reported fears of getting things wrong when speaking the target language and fostered a greater willingness to take beneficial risks in learning that were not evident within the formal classroom context.

This case study suggests the potential of CLIL through physical education, in this instance with an emphasis on the foreign language of French to English speaking students. The findings suggest the importance of providing an applied learning environment that emphasises working as a group. This has the potential to increase a willingness to take risks and therefore reduce the fear of getting it wrong. In turn, this may enable students to approach language tasks, for example as in this case the spontaneous speaking element of their future GCSE French studies, with more confidence. This concurs with other recent research, for example Coral and Lleixá’s (2016: 124) findings that ‘oral production increases if cooperative group organisation is used’, and that ‘pupils seem to lose their inhibitions to use foreign language spontaneously for face-to-face interaction when participating in PE tasks that include language in the activity’. In addition, Salvador-Garcia et al. (2018) highlight the success of the physical education CLIL environment in reducing foreign language anxiety. The findings here add to the growing literature exploring ways to enhance learning a foreign language.

The findings also add to the debate on language education and support the views of others, including MacIntyre and Mercer (2014), who advocate the importance of improving students’ experiences of learning a foreign language whilst maintaining their motivation and positive emotions through meaningful experiences. The physical education lessons appeared to allow students to communicate and develop their understanding and confidence of learning French in an authentic way. Ultimately, ‘motivation is one of the most significant predictors of success in foreign language learning’ (Coleman et al., 2007: 245), and providing opportunities for success in authentic spontaneous speaking situations contributes to this. By creating an alternative paradigm of meaning-making in physical education and a new pedagogical platform, away from the performative default position, physical education holds huge potential for students ‘to explore their personal experiences in movement and to use these to derive a greater understanding of themselves and the world in which they live’ (O’Connor, 2018: 1).

The CLIL approach to the physical education lessons, rather than working in opposition to the expected status quo of focusing on motor skills, tactics and strategy, teamwork and leadership, appears complementary to them. This has the potential to endorse Coral and Lleixá’s (2016: 124) six teaching strategies conducive to successful CLIL in physical education, particularly in avoiding ‘long explanations that reduce children’s movement time’, including ‘referee teams’ where learners justify their decisions, embedding ‘language into the tasks avoiding activities that slow down the pace of the game’, and integrating ‘motor with language contents’.

This case study has also addressed previous work highlighting a need to include the ‘perceptions of the pupils’ (Salvador-Garcia and Chiva-Bartoll, 2017: 1136) when exploring CLIL practices in physical education. Listening to the voices of students who have experienced spontaneous speaking opportunities in a foreign language within a physical education platform portrays the importance of establishing a stimulating, situated context. It may not be possible to replicate the scale and scope of this study in every educational setting, and the authors acknowledge that teachers would need support and second language expertise (Dobson, 2005) in developing a cross-curricular approach whereby subjects can support each other to facilitate learning. This study does, however, suggest that when small teams of teachers plan and work together with a shared vision, opportunities for exploring and embedding CLIL into the curriculum are possible and this would be worthy of further research. A physical education-located CLIL model appears to offer learning experiences within the skill-based traditions of physical education beyond ‘learning to move’, providing a context for ‘moving to learn’ as an investment towards embodied learning.

Physical education continues to have to justify its own educational value (Kirk, 2010) and the ideas presented here may help to address concerns over the status and place of physical education and its ‘continuing marginalisation in the curricula of many schools’ (Kirk and Macdonald, 2009: 132). At a time when schools in England continue to struggle to promote languages as subjects to embrace, this study is timely in ‘highlighting the power of physical education in contributing to learning beyond its own boundaries’ (Lamb, 2016: 69). A CLIL pedagogical approach within physical education presents an alternative proposition, complementing a collaborative learning model with the potential to contribute to a broad range of educational outcomes.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the school, languages staff, physical education staff and students for their participation and for making this study possible. The authors would also like to thank Ian Hunter for funding this research through the University of East Anglia Ian Hunter Prize.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded through the University of East Anglia Ian Hunter Prize.

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