Course Description

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has become the umbrella term describing both learning another (content) subject such as physics or geography through the medium of a foreign language and learning a foreign language by studying a content-based subject. In English Language Teaching (ELT), forms of CLIL have previously been known as 'Content-based instruction', 'English across the curriculum ' and 'Bilingual education'. Proficiency in three Community languages is stated as one of the objectives of education in Europe in the European Commission's White Paper on 'Teaching and Learning. Towards the Learning Society'. The vision of a bilingual and multilingual Europe is clear. The European Commission, through funded research projects in universities across Europe, has been investigating the state of language teacher training and bilingual education since the early-90s, pulling together the threads of existing approaches such as 'content based instruction', 'language supported subject learning', 'immersion', 'teaching subjects through a foreign language', and 'bilingual / plurilingual education'. All the aformentioned terms suggest a strong relationship between language learning and the learning of other 'content ' subjects, with CLIL, the term having originally been defined in 1994 and launched by UNICOM in 1996, emerging as the most promising and beneficial approach