Towards a real integration of content and language in CLIL

Abstract

Over the last decades, content and language integrated learning (CLIL) research has largely focused on the analysis of the implementation and potential linguistic benefits and drawbacks of this approach. More recently, however, research studies are taking a step back and focusing on the key term integration in CLIL. This article aims at making a proposal for classroom practices that may help us turn this integration into a reality by bringing the language and the content paradigms closer together. In so doing, we will try to provide an answer to some of the challenges that CLIL raises by targeting the often forgotten element in the CLIL equation, namely subject content, and the possible detrimental effects of CLIL on studying a subject matter through a foreign language.