CLIL, languages of schooling and the role of implicit learning with special reference to the learning of mathematics

Content and Language Integrated Learning became very popular in Europe in a
relatively short period of time. Since the acronym was coined in the mid-nineties
hundreds of schools have adopted the approach whereby in primary and
secondary schools content is taught via the medium of a foreign or second
language. This does not mean that in a particular country all schools are
involved. More often than not it is only part of the education system that uses
the CLIL approach (Eurydice, 2017). Yet, the following question seems more
than legitimate. Why is it that in a fairly conservative field such as education
the CLIL approach has gained so much momentum in such a short period of
time? In this contribution we will try to give answers that are normally discarded
from the CLIL debate. Of course, we know that the success of CLIL is due
to a better mastery of the target language (see for instance Dalton-Puffer, 2008,
Linares et al., 2012) and also to better cognitive development (see for instance
Jäppinen, 2005, author a, 2007a, Lorenzo et al., 2010) but despite CLIL’s success
and popularity one of the most frequently heard complaints by researchers is
about the lack of empirical, statistically relevant, longitudinal studies (see for
instance Pérez-Cañado, 2012).

Publication year:2018

Keywords:CLIL, Multilingualism

Authors:Regional

Accessibility:Open