What is CLIL?

CLIL: Content and Language Integrated Learning

The CLIL is an approach for learning content through an additional language (foreign or second), thus teaching both the subject and the language. The key issue is to avoid working on the language learning exclusively. The main focus of the CLIL is the content and by the way when we are learning we practice and produce language (communicative situations). 

Now we know what CLIL is, but after reading different articles in class, we have realized that there is not a unique interpretation of this methodology, but there are many different versions of it. We have some examples of the CLIC project as the Artigal method, the one in Catalonia, another one in Zerain or the Reggio Emilian version.

All of them form part of CLIL, but they may respond to different situations conditioned by the context they are surrounded to, because we can´t work in the same way in each school. According to what Dahllof, U. says:

“Too much attention is directed  towards finding the ‘best method’, even though fifty years  of educational research has not been able to support such generalisations. Instead, we should ask which method or combination of methods is best for which  goals, which students and under which conditions”. Dahllof, U (1999).