The following articles by Steve Darn are published by the British Council, a government entity that describes itself as “The United Kingdom’s international orgainisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities.”

The subject of the articles is Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), which, as Mr. Darn says, “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.” As he notes, it is related to Languages Across the Curriculum (LAC), Content Based Instruction (CBI), and a number of other teaching modalities.

The first article, simply entitled “Content and Language Integrated Learning,” provides an overview of the subject, including a basic definition of the term and an explanation of “why CLIL is important.” These are standard features of most articles on the subject.

More helpful is the section “How does CLIL work?” It includes a series of bullet points, the most important of which, in my view, are “Reading is the essential skill” and “Prepare for future studies and/or working life.” For American college teachers contemplating adoption of a CLIL course the key question is, how will it add value for the students? For many students, a class that foregrounds reading with an emphasis on future study and work will add the most value.

Next in the article is the section “CLIL in the classroom.” It includes a mini-lesson on fashion history that illustrates such points as “Focus on Lexis rather that grammar” and “Focus on language related to the subject. Level and grading are unimportant.”

Finally, there is a section called “The future of CLIL.” It includes a list of challenges. I have encountered all of them in my efforts to promote CLIL courses, but I will single out one: “There is little evidence to suggest that understanding of content is not reduced by lack of language competence. Current opinion seems to be that language ability can only be increased by content-based learning after a certain stage.” One must bear this in mind when applying the principle “Focus on Lexis rather that grammar.” For example, English-speaking students of Russian must be able not only to recognize vocabulary but also to distinguish one case from another in order to understand the lexicon they are learning. Within the past year I have had students confidently tell me that Joseph Stalin recently unveiled in Khabarovsk a statue of the Regional Committee of the Russian Communist Party.

The article concludes with a section on “Where is CLIL happening” and list of further reading.

The second article, “CLIL: A lesson framework,” proposes to “look more closely at how CLIL is realised in the classroom.”

The article begins with a series of principles. For American educators the following may be most helpful:

“[…] the literature suggests that there remains a dearth of CLIL-type materials, and a lack of teacher training programmes to prepare both language and subject teachers for CLIL teaching.” Professor Darn is referring to “multilingual Europe”; the problem is even more acute in the United States. For this reason, LAC/CLIL teaching in the US is probably best suited to two groups:

1. Teachers in Modern Language departments that have embraced the recommendations of the MLA to take “a broad, intellectually driven approach to teaching language and culture” and “review their [PhD] programs to align them with the learning needs and career goals of students.” Faculty members in such departments will represent a variety of specialties within the broad field of language, literature, and culture. They will possess language teaching skills and they will be interested in new modalities such as content and language integration.
2. Content teachers in fields such as International Business who accept the conclusion of Albert Saiz and Elena Zoido (summarized in The Economist on March 11, 2014) that the study of a foreign language adds value to a college degree in the form of increased lifetime earnings. They are experts in fields that lead to rewarding careers, and their belief in the concrete benefits of foreign language learning will incline them to teach a CLIL class which, in Professor Darn’s definition, are “not a language lesson neither is it a subject lesson transmitted in a foreign language.” Rather, it combines elements of content, communication, cognition, and culture.

Teachers in both of these categories should be eager to avail themselves of resources provided for prospective LAC and CLIL programs by such institutions as The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA).

The remainder of the article contains practical advice for how to construct CLIL lessons. I will not attempt to summarize it because it is relatively short and should be read in its entirety be anyone who is serious about teaching a LAC/CLIL course. The article concludes with some suggestions for further reading. One purpose of this blog will be to find similar readings and in particular resources that will be helpful to US college teachers.