Introduction

Abstract

This book aims at exploring foreign language (FL) use during peer interactions in new Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) contexts. These include authentic educational settings in which learners can use their FL in more natural interactions than in traditional sit-down classrooms. In particular, this book seeks to uncover how FL learners may perform during peer interactions situated in contexts that are on the one hand liberated from customary “bricks and mortar” classrooms, but at the same time are still framed by socioculturally influenced learning goals. Following a sociocultural perspective on language acquisition, CLIL encourages active student participation and the use of the FL in diverse interactions (Coyle et al. 2010). Meanwhile, sociocultural theory on learning holds that social interaction generates sites in which knowledge of higher mental functions originates and becomes internalized for subsequent individual use (Lantolf and Thorne 2006). Increased consideration of social interaction as a learning resource has consequently embraced peer interactions in its sphere of inquiry. From a sociocultural perspective, language use in peer interactions should be explored as an element for learning.