Free TKT: CLIL Exam Flashcards

TKT: CLIL is Cambridge English's specialist module on Content and Language Integrated Learning. It is distinct from the three core TKT modules and from TKT: YL, the separate specialist module on young learners.

The official handbook distributes 80 questions as 25 Knowledge of CLIL, 25 Lesson Preparation, 20 Lesson Delivery, and 10 Assessment. This 50-card review scales that distribution to 16, 16, 12, and 6 cards by largest-remainder rounding.

Content and Language Integrated Learning is an approach in which learners develop curricular content and a target language together. The content subject remains central while language is planned as support for learning and communication.

Coyle's 4 Cs are Content, Communication, Cognition, and Culture. A well-planned CLIL lesson considers subject learning, the language needed to communicate, thinking processes, and cultural or citizenship perspectives.

Content is the subject knowledge, concepts, and skills learners are developing—for example, understanding a scientific process or interpreting a historical source. It gives the language work a purposeful curricular context.

Communication includes the language learners need to understand, discuss, explain, and present subject ideas. Plan both receptive language, such as reading a diagram, and productive language, such as justifying a conclusion.

Cognition is the thinking learners use to work with content. It ranges from recalling and classifying to analysing, evaluating, and creating. Cognitive demand should be challenging but supported.

Culture in the 4 Cs connects learning with perspectives, communities, and citizenship. It can invite learners to compare viewpoints and understand how a topic is experienced in different contexts.

Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills are the language skills commonly used for everyday social interaction. They are not the same as the academic language learners may need to explain evidence or write a subject report.

Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency is language used for demanding academic tasks. It includes the ability to understand and express subject-specific ideas, relationships, and reasoning in contexts with less immediate support.

Content-obligatory language is language learners need in order to understand or communicate the subject content. In a science unit on forces, terms such as force, friction, and measure may be essential to the learning goal.

Content-compatible language is useful language that can be developed through the topic but is not essential for learning that content. A unit on habitats might provide opportunities to practise comparative forms even if they are not the core subject objective.

A communication skill is a language function used to work with content, such as comparing, hypothesising, explaining cause and effect, interpreting data, or justifying an opinion. Match the function to the task learners must complete.

Higher-order thinking goes beyond recalling information. Analysing relationships, evaluating evidence, defending a judgement, and creating a solution require learners to manipulate and apply knowledge in more complex ways.

Learning skills are transferable ways of working, such as note-taking, researching, estimating and checking, sequencing, editing, and guessing meaning from context. They support learners' independence in different subjects.

Action verbs can signal the thinking a task asks for. “List” often signals remembering; “explain” understanding; “calculate” applying; “justify” analysing; “recommend” evaluating; and “design” creating. The full task context still matters.

Intended learning outcomes state what learners should be able to know or do by the end of a lesson or sequence. Clear outcomes help align content, language, cognition, activity, and assessment choices.

A content objective names the curricular learning, such as explaining the stages of a water cycle. It should specify the subject understanding or skill rather than simply the activity learners will perform.

A language objective identifies the vocabulary, grammar, discourse, or function learners need for the content task. For comparing data, learners may need comparative forms and language for describing differences.

Language demands are the features learners need to access and communicate the content: key vocabulary, text patterns, grammatical forms, and functions. Identifying them early makes it possible to plan targeted support.

A text genre is a recognisable type of spoken or written text with a purpose and typical organisation, such as a procedure, report, explanation, description, or recount. Teach the genre that fits the subject task.

A visual organiser makes relationships in content visible. Select it for its purpose: a sequence chart for stages, a Venn diagram for similarities and differences, or a timeline for chronological order.

A concept map displays ideas and labelled relationships among them. It can help learners organise a topic, connect prior knowledge with new information, and see cause, category, or part-whole links.

A Venn diagram uses overlapping areas to show what two or more sets share and how they differ. It supports comparison because the overlap contains common features and the non-overlapping areas show unique features.

A flow chart represents the stages and decisions in a process. Arrows show direction or sequence, making it useful for procedures, systems, cycles with a clear path, and cause-to-result processes.

Adapting materials makes the content more accessible without removing the learning goal. A teacher might add visuals, reduce unnecessary language, divide a long text into sections, or highlight essential vocabulary.

A word bank or glossary supplies selected key terms and meanings or visuals. It reduces avoidable vocabulary barriers so learners can focus on the content task; it should support, not replace, meaningful use of the words.

A writing frame provides a structured template for a text genre, often with headings, sentence starters, or connectors. It scaffolds how learners organise subject information while they develop control of the language.

Choose an activity because it advances a planned objective. A ranking task can develop evaluation, a matching task can reinforce key relationships, and an information-gap task can create a real reason to communicate.

Activating prior knowledge brings forward what learners already know about a topic, language, or experience before new learning. It helps a teacher identify useful starting points and makes new content easier to connect.

CLIL planning should not make a task easy merely by lowering its thinking demand. Keep the worthwhile content and cognitive goal, then provide support through modelling, visuals, structured language, staged tasks, or collaboration.

Select resources for their fit with the objectives, learners, and task. Diagrams, real objects, video, data displays, and digital tools can support understanding when they make important content or language more accessible.

Scaffolding is temporary, purposeful support that enables learners to complete a task they could not yet manage independently. It can support both content and language and should be reduced as learners gain control.

Modelling shows learners what a successful process or product looks like. A think-aloud makes the teacher's decisions visible—for example, explaining how to extract evidence from a graph before learners try it.

Wait time is the pause after a question or learner response. Allowing thinking time can improve the quality and number of responses, especially when learners are processing both subject content and an additional language.

Classroom language is the language used to manage learning and discuss content: giving instructions, checking understanding, asking questions, prompting explanation, and providing feedback. Make it comprehensible while keeping its purpose clear.

A question sequence can move from lower-demand recall or observation toward explanation, prediction, and justification. This builds confidence and prepares learners for more complex thinking rather than requiring it without support.

Recasting reformulates a learner's message in a more accurate or appropriate way while preserving the intended meaning. It provides a model without necessarily interrupting communication with a lengthy correction.

Checking understanding gathers evidence that learners understand the content, task, or language. Ask learners to explain, show, sort, apply, or summarise; a simple “Do you understand?” gives much weaker evidence.

Learning strategies are deliberate approaches learners use to manage learning, such as predicting from headings, using context to infer meaning, organising notes, planning a search, or checking a result. Teach and name the strategy explicitly.

Consolidation revisits important learning so it becomes more secure and connected. Learners might explain a diagram in words, apply a concept to a new example, or summarise the lesson's key relationships.

Differentiation adjusts support, resources, process, or expected output so learners can work toward the same worthwhile objective at an appropriate level of challenge. It is more than giving faster learners extra work.

A learner's first language can sometimes be used strategically to clarify a complex idea, compare concepts, or plan an answer. Use it purposefully alongside opportunities to develop the target language required by the task.

Actionable feedback identifies what is working and names a next step linked to the objective. “Add evidence from the graph to support your conclusion” is more useful than general praise because it guides revision.

In CLIL, decide whether the assessment is gathering evidence of content knowledge, language use, communication, learning skills, or a combination. The task and criteria should match that stated focus.

Formative assessment happens during learning to identify progress and next steps. Brief questioning, observation, an exit response, or feedback on a draft can help a teacher and learners adjust what happens next.

Summative assessment evaluates learning at the end of a unit, course, or defined period. It can report achievement, but its design still needs to make clear which CLIL outcomes—content, language, or both—it is measuring.

Self-assessment asks learners to judge their own work against criteria; peer assessment asks them to respond to another learner's work. Clear, accessible criteria and modelling help either process produce useful learning rather than vague praise.

A portfolio is a purposeful collection of work that shows development over time. It can include drafts, final products, reflections, and feedback, allowing progress in content, language, or learning strategies to become visible.

Support strategies reduce avoidable language barriers without changing the construct being assessed. Depending on the assessment aim, they can include clearer instructions, familiar task formats, visual support, extra processing time, or a glossary of non-target words.