With CLIL, "there is a focus not only on the content, and not only on the language" (Coyle, Hood, & Marsh, 2010, p. 1), which presents a problematic dichotomy. Indeed, CLIL is the integration of content and language, yet, evident in classrooms around the world, the tendency is to focus on one or the other (Nikula et al., 2016; Ikeda et al., 2022). There have been advances in how the integration is dealt with, for example, conceptualising the unified construct as the intersects of content and language pedagogy (Leung & Morton, 2016), with Cognitive Discourse Functions (CDFs) (Dalton-Puffer, 2013), with literacy at the center of learning (Meyer et al., 2015), or through multimodal mediational means (Leontjev & deBoer, 2020). In this presentation, using the CDF construct and multimodalities, integration of content and language will be reconceptualised to illustrate an assessment framework (deBoer, forthcoming), based on Feuerstein et al.'s Learning Propensity Assessment Device (2010) designed to develop the learner. Empirical evidence for this presentation comes from learners in a General English course at a Japanese university as they worked on research projects, using an asynchronous online forum to communicate, share files and information, and create a presentation. Their interaction will be used to illustrate how multimodalities exemplify CDFs and how learners integrated the content and language to co-construct knowledge and advance their joint understanding. The assessment framework for CLIL will be demonstrated, providing insight into how educators can mediate learners through transduction (Kress, 1997) and CDFs to develop learners' understanding of concepts, rather than focus on content or language.
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