CLIL and its benefits in contemporary teaching and learning

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CLIL and its benefits in contemporary teaching and learning

These days, the language learning has changed radically, which brought many new methods and approaches in the language teaching, especially for teaching English. There are many methods of teaching English at our disposal and one of the most promising, innovative methods that’s also growing so fast in so many European countries is CLIL. But, what is CLIL and what are its benefits in teaching and learning of a foreign language?

CLIL, or Content and Language Integrated Learning, is a teaching method used to teach both a particular subject and a foreign language. In other words, language is used to teach content and content is used to teach language. It has a lot to do with language immersion. The term was created by David Marsh in 1994 and consists in learning a foreign language through learning a subject in that language, for example, learning History in English in an Albanian-speaking country.

There are a number of benefits to using CLIL in the classroom. Firstly, many teachers see CLIL as a more natural way to learn a language. When a subject is taught in that language there is a concrete reason to learn both at the same time. And as students have a real context to learn the language in, they are often more motivated to do so, as they can only get the most of the content if they understand the language around it. This way, student’s progress more quickly and solidly than they would with deliberately separated subjects. Moreover, being content focused, CLIL classes add an extra dimension to the class and engage students, which is especially advantageous in situations where students are unenthusiastic about learning a language. Thus, students are actually doing something with the language, rather than dealing in some of the rather tired phrases and topics that old-fashioned language lessons tend to turn up. The focus is on language acquisition rather than enforced learning, i.e. building up language competency through using it to explore and discuss curriculum topics, leading to more natural and sophisticated communicative skills over time.

Secondly, because CLIL is so strongly associated with both a content area and a foreign language, it’s naturally imbued with cultural and societal significance. Your students will develop a stronger understanding of a foreign culture as a result of CLIL instruction and will be more likely to “see the big picture” in terms of the relationship between language and society. Also, knowing more about a language increases sometimes the learners’ interests in different cultures such as the one they are learning the language from. As a result, CLIL helps students in developing bilingualism or multilingual interests and attitudes as well as broadening their intercultural knowledge and understanding.

Thirdly, CLIL also encourages students to develop 21st Century skills, including the ability to think critically, be creative, to communicate, collaborate, to prepare students for further studies and work and increase their opportunities in life.

Finally, CLIL offers new learning strategies while adding diversity and flexibility to existing methods and forms of classroom practice.

On the other hand, CLIL as many other methods has some challenges. As CLIL is subject-focused, language teachers may also have to develop their own knowledge of new subjects in order to teach effectively. They must also structure classes carefully so that the students understand the content of the lesson, as well as the language through which the information is being conveyed. In other words, there is a need for more teacher training and materials.

And when it comes to classroom management, educators need to be very aware of individual student understanding and progress. It’s therefore important to consistently concept check and scaffold the materials to be sure both the language and content are being learned.

All things considered, the CLIL approach provides lots of opportunities in teaching and learning a language. It is a much more sophisticated way of learning languages and learning other subjects. CLIL brings authentic learning into the learning experience from the very beginning, it teaches you how to learn in a safe way and it slowly guides you to becoming a master learner / speaker of a foreign language. However, we must also take into consideration the challenges or disadvantages before applying this method into the classroom. I believe that CLIL is a great method. Many also call it ‘the method of the future’, as it is accepted by parents as well, but I think that it still needs improvement, especially, in the lack of funds, teachers, trainers and materials. CLIL has very good points but it is not appropriate for every country or system. Efforts and studies should continue to be made in order for it to be successful.