The CLIL crossover: from learning through additional languages to language aware learning scenarios

Abstract

The Content and Language Integrated Learning approach (CLIL) originated in the mid-1990s as a means to improve European citizens’ competence in additional or foreign languages (AL). According to Cenoz et al. (2013: 216), CLIL is a ‘well-recognised and useful construct for promoting L2/foreign language teaching’. However, after more than two decades of implementation, CLIL has shown two educational crossovers regarding both its conceptualisation and its transferability: the one from being considered as an approach focused on learning content through additional languages to being identified as a language-rich and translanguaging-oriented way of learning (San Isidro, 2018); and the one from being a European initiative to its endorsement  by and adaptation to the rest of the world (Yang, 2015).