Page 58 - Teaching English at Primary Level: From Theory into the Classroom

Content and Language Integrated Learning

CLIL has been linked to bilingual educational programmes, especially im-
mersion forms of education which were designed in Canada in the 1960s in
order to enhance the acquisition of French as the second national language.
However, the Canadian context differs from the European one in one essen-
tial point: in Canada, English is the dominant national language and French is
the second, also national language, while in Europe, CLIL has emerged as an
approachinteachingforeignlanguageswhichthelearnersencountermainly
at school. So, while in the Canadian context, the language immersion class-
room content can be related as much to the learners’ everyday life and cul-
ture as to their school subjects, in CLIL, the non-linguistic focus is primarily
on the content of subjects, such as mathematics, science, or music (Dalton-
Puffer et al., 2010). Coyle (2011) argues that CLIL is not meant to replace lan-
guage lessons but rather to provide different contexts in which a foreign
language could be used for learning and communicative purposes. A study
conducted by Várkuti (2010) indicates that CLIL students have significantly
better skills in applying their broader lexical knowledge in various context-
embedded conversational situations, as well as in taking into account gram-
mar rules, text coherence, and sociolinguistic context.
The CLIL approach is known under various names (Kampen et al., 2016),
such as cognitiveacademic languagelearning (CALL), content-based language
teaching (CBLT), bilingual education, and others. The extent to which CLIL is
included in a particular learning situation varies as the FL objectives may be
either more content or more language oriented (Ellison, 2019). Several au-
thors (Ball et al., 2015; Dalton-Puffer, 2010; Lipavic Oštir & Lipovec, 2018) also
distinguish between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ CLIL. In hard CLIL, the focus is primarily
on developing knowledge and skills related to a particular subject content
(such as science or mathematics), while in ‘soft’ CLIL, the content is subordi-
nate to language objectives. Coyle (2005) points out that it is content which
determines what will be taught, not language. In other words, CLIL is not
about learning different aspects of a language but rather using the new lan-
guage to talk about a specific content. What is important at this point is that
the language used has to be understandable and accessible so that learning
can take place.

The Elements of CLIL
An important aspect of CLIL in the primary education context is that it pro-
motes holistic and interdisciplinary learning (Ellison, 2019), which is in line
with the principles of an integrated curriculum. This characteristic of CLIL is
realized through the 4Cs model which consists of four elements: content,cog-

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