No, absolutely not. What matters most, is that a CLIL teacher has sufficient English for their subject. In Austria, you don’t have any official requirement of a language level. Of course, a solid B2 is nice to have but then again it is not necessary in every setting. In their Café CLIL podcast, Phil Ball and Keith Kelly discuss Teacher Language for CLIL in episode 8. In this episode, Phil gives a very nice description of one of the best CLIL lessons he ever attended when a maths teacher was doing his CLIL lesson absolutely perfectly but, according to Phil, was surely only at B1 level. So, good CLIL pedagogy is much more important than perfect English competence.
But, what kind of language is it then, that a CLIL teacher needs?
First of all, of course, the language of their subject. This will very often include academic language (= Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency). Typically, CLIL teachers don’t have many problems including this subject specific language in their lessons – they are familiar with this kind of language.
Second, they should be able to use typical classroom English. What does that include? The ability to give instructions clearly, to manage student interaction (“work in pairs…”, Let’s compare the results…”), to paraphrase, to simplify complicated language, to summarize learner contributions, etc. This might be much more difficult for CLIL teachers as that kind of language is not typically needed in their expert life outside the classroom.
Was bedeutet das nun für eine CLIL Lehrkraft an einer österreichischen BHS? Es bedeutet, dass die sich die Lehrkräfte nicht allzu viele Sorgen um eine 100% korrekte Aussprache, die grammatische Korrektheit oder eine idiomatisch perfekte Sprachverwendung machen sollten.
Wichtig ist vor allem die erfolgreiche Kommunikation im Klassenzimmer zwischen Lehrer:innen und Schüler:innen sowie auch zwischen den Schüler:innen untereinander! Dann ist ein CLIL Lehr- und Lernziel erreicht.
