Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) it is an education system that consists of learning subjects such as history and geography through an additional language. To have a successful language learning it is important to receive instruction and at the same time to have the opportunity to experience it in real life. That is what it technical terms would be acquisition. This led me to the fact that naturalness is essential when learning a language, in other words, you have to be in contact with all aspects of a language in order to have a successful learning.
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As the booklet states, learning a language by going through “the often difficult proves of sorting out sounds, structures, grammar or vocabulary is rarely natural. ” (p. 3) Learning a language in school it is often very problematic because each student has their own needs and aspirations so it is very difficult to take in account all the circumstances, to put it in another way “their personal learning styles may not fully suit the approach which the school uses. ” (p. 5) This system has two main aims, they focus on the subject, and they also focus on the language.
It is an efficient method because the students concentrate on the subject and learn the second language almost without realising. CLIL provides the students with the ability to think, understand and study in different language. It is helpful to have different perspectives and “it helps broaden our conceptual mapping resources. ” (p. 8) Some of the advantages of CLIL are that instruction and acquisition are both accomplished, and students are given confidence by focusing on the positive aspects and using the motivation it creates to reach the best results.
The “disadvantage” of these educational opportunities is that it has been often offered to people who could afford that education and to those who were picked for some reason. In other words, it was restricted to a small groups in society. What CLIL pretends is the opposite, to give the opportunity to every person, no matter their social, economical or cultural status. This booklet was really interesting for me. First of all, I have been given the opportunity to study in a bilingual school, due to the fact that I come from the Basque Country.
I know that the educational system this “paper” offers is not a bilingual education but a learning of two or more language in a, more or less, “natural” context. It was a very positive experience for me because, nowadays, I can express myself on both languages with any difficulties. As far as CLIL is concerned, it is very committed in teaching a second language but without forgetting that the first language it is the most important one. I mean, if a student has some struggles when learning the second language it could be invited to leave the programme.
An advantage of learning subjects such as geography in a foreign language is that the students learn lots of vocabulary without almost realising, they forget about the language to focus on the topic. To sum up, CLIL is a very good opportunity for learning a second language because it is concerned about every aspect that it is important to take in account when learning a language, instruction and acquisition. Because a language it is not only to learn by heart the verb tenses, phrasal verbs, etc. If you do not know how to use it in real life, all the learning process would be fruitless.
