CLIL approaches in education: Opportunities, challenges, or threats?

Abstract

Our world is constantly changing; hence, the importance of being able to respond to its demands is of utmost importance. There is an enormous need to innovate and create, as well as apply new and/or different ways of doing things in every aspect of life, including education, which has evolved over the years and will continue doing so for years to come. This is why different approaches to learning have appeared (Coyle, 1999, 2009; Deyrich & Kari Stunnel, 2014a), amongst them CLIL (content and language integrated learning), an approach which in its original conception was about teaching and learning not only language but also content. Nowadays people “need to learn a language to confront the demands of a new society; the studied language may provide a better status and the possibility to use it for different needs” (Rodriguez Bonces, 2012b, p. 180). And what better way could there be to learn it than through a meaningful, real, and contextualized approach such as CLIL? As Rodriguez Bonces (2012a) suggests, CLIL increases motivation since “language is used to fulfill real purposes, its use is authentic and much more meaningful for the students” (p. 183). This argument alone has provided many institutions with a viable option to look for something different in the classroom. doi: 10.5294/laclil.2016.9.2.1