CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) is an approach which is neither language learning nor subject learning, but an amalgam of both and is linked to the processes of con

CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) is an approach which is neither language learning nor subject learning, but an amalgam of both and is linked to the processes of convergence – the fusion of elements which may have been previously fragmented, such as subjects in the curriculum. This is where CLIL is groundbreaking.

To give a parallel example common in recent times, we can take studies on the environment. A seminal publication on the subject in the 1960s later led to a need to educate young people in schools so as to both inform and, perhaps more crucially, influence behavior. Topics relating to the environment could already be found in chemistry, economics, geography, physics, and even psychology. Yet, as climate change became increasingly worrying, education responded with the introduction of a new subject: “Environmental studies”.

In order to structure this new subject, teachers of different disciplines would have needed to climb out of their respective mindsets grounded in physics, chemistry, geography, psychology and so on, to explore ways of building an integrated curriculum, and to develop alternative methodologies by which to implement it. Climate change is a global and local phenomenon, so the increasing availability in some countries of information and communication technologies during the 1990s provided tools by which to make some of these methodologies operational.

If we return to languages and CLIL, we have a similar situation. The late 1990s meant that educational insight was firmly set on achieving a high degree of language awareness. Appropriate methodologies were to be used to attain the best possible results in a way which accommodated diverse learning styles.

(D. Coyle, P. Hood, D. Marsh. CLIL: content language integrated learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2010.)

In the extract from the fourth paragraph “Appropriate methodologies were to be used to attain the best possible results”, the expression in bold may be substituted by the following modal if meaning is to be preserved: