Content-and-Language Integrated Learning: From Practice to Principles?

This article surveys recent work on content-and-language integrated learning (CLIL). Related to both content-based instruction and immersion education by virtue of its dual focus on language and content, CLIL is here understood as an educational model for contexts where the classroom provides the only site for learners’ interaction in the target language. That is, CLIL is about either foreign languages or lingua francas. The discussion foregrounds a prototypical CLIL context (Europe) but also refers to work done elsewhere. The first part of the discussion focuses on policy issues, describing how CLIL practice operates in a tension between grassroots decisions and higher order policymaking, an area where…