CLIL stands for Content and Language Integrated Learning. It refers to teaching subjects such as science, history and geography to students through a foreign language. This can be by the English teacher using cross-curricular content or the subject teacher using English as the language of instruction. Both methods result in the simultaneous learning of content and English.
The term CLIL was coined by David Marsh, University of Jyväskylä, Finland (1994): «CLIL refers to situations where subjects, or parts of subjects, are taught through a foreign language with dual-focused aims, namely the learning of content and the simultaneous learning of a foreign language.»
However, CLIL teaching has been practised for many years, from the Babylonian era to the early sixties when bi-lingual education was introduced in many schools around the world. Even if you are unaware of the term CLIL, you may already have been using CLIL methodology for many years.
Find out more about CLIL in the informative article: What is CLIL? in the free CLIL Teacher Magazine. A more in-depth exploration about CLIL – what it is, what it is not and the challenges faced by CLIL teachers – can be found in the Methodology section.
