Young learners, Maths, EFL and Chess: With CLIL they all progress
Thomas Zapounidis
Although the benefits of CLIL methodology (Coyle, Hood, & Marsh, 2010; Mehisto, Marsh & Frigols, 2008) as well as chess instruction in general (Aciego, Garcia, & Betancort, 2012) are well acknowledged and widely documented in the literature, only a few countries widely use CLIL in most of their schools and even fewer have included chess in their main curriculum. To this end, this paper enriches the current literature with reference to CLIL and chess by describing the innovative incorporation of chess in the mainstream syllabus of a primary school with a double focus in mind. On the one hand, this article aims at underlining the multiple benefits of chess on young learners and, on the other hand, it attempts to promote the idea of teaching chess in a foreign language in accordance to the CLIL methodology.
Key words: CLIL, chess, young learners, EFL