Plurilingual education portal

Subject classification: this is an education resource.

Type classification: this resource is a course.

Starting activity

Imagine you are in a science classroom in a school in Germany, but the class is taught in English. The teacher is explaining the concept of photosynthesis, but some students struggle to understand key terms.

Task:

Think about which strategies the teacher could use to help students understand the content while simultaneously working on their English competencies.
Reflect on how this approach could be applied in other subjects.

Objectives

At the end of this section, you will be able to:

Understand the principles and importance of CLIL.
Explore its historical development and different definitions.
Identify key implementation strategies.
Analyze concrete examples of CLIL in practice.
Assess your understanding through self-assessment tasks.

Key words

CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning); bilingual education; multilingualism; scaffolding; language immersion; task-based learning, authentic materials

Table of content

Introduction: Importance of CLIL
History of the Concept
Definitions and Theoretical Perspectives
Implementing CLIL: Strategies and Examples
Challenges and Benefits
Take-home Messages
Self-Assessment
Resources for go further
Bibliography

Introduction: Why is CLIL important?

In a globalized world, plurilingual education is increasingly necessary. CLIL provides an effective way to teach subject content while also fostering language acquisition. It promotes deeper learning, cognitive flexibility, and intercultural understanding, and prepares students for academic and professional mobility in an interconnected world (Bonnet & Breidbach, 2025, forthcoming). As an educational initiative driven by the European Commission and the Council of Europe, CLIL supports foreign language learning, plurilingualism, cultural education, democratic citizenship, and internationalization in education (Mehisto, Marsh & Frigols, 2008).

History of the concept

CLIL dates back to the 1960s and was initially intended to serve the goals of post-WWII reconciliation and European integration. From the 1990s onward, its focus shifted toward enhancing mobility within a common European labor market and higher education area. CLIL has evolved through multiple influences, including:

Canadian immersion programs
The European Union’s language policy initiatives
The rise of task-based and communicative approaches in language education

Definitions and discussion of definitions

CLIL can be broadly defined as an educational approach in which various language-supportive methodologies are used to create dual-focused instruction that addresses both the additional language and content (Coyle, Hood & Marsh, 2010).

Various conceptualizations of CLIL exist along a continuum:

Term	Focus
CLIL	Integrates language and content with balanced focus
Immersion	Language acquisition through full content exposure
Bilingual Education	General term for teaching in two languages
English Medium Instruction (EMI)	Stronger emphasis on content, language is vehicle
Content-Based Language Teaching (CBLT)	Focuses more on language gains

CLIL differs from other terms in its pedagogical and policy-driven nature. It supports language and subject matter learning simultaneously but often lacks interaction strategies typical of natural plurilingualism. Global linguae francae tend to dominate over heritage languages.

Implementing CLIL: Strategies and Examples

CLIL pedagogy involves strategies and techniques that support both language and content acquisition, while fostering students’ participation. Examples include:

Example 1: Scaffolding (with multilingual glossaries and visuals), focusing on the action of subject specific vocabulary

Example: A history lesson on the Industrial Revolution includes infographics, labeled diagrams, and bilingual or multilingual glossaries.
Impact: Helps students grasp complex concepts and events while reinforcing the acquisition of specific subject lexical items.

Example 2: Bilingual Task-Based Learning, focusing on increasing students’ participation

Example: In a geography class, students collaborate to create a presentation on climate change, using both their first language and the additional language of instruction.
Impact: Encourages active engagement and authentic language use.

CLIL also engages with communicative discourse functions (Llinares & Morton, 2017), genres (written/spoken texts), and multimodal strategies to make knowledge construction explicit. These strategies allow content and language to be co-developed and assessed.

Challenges and Benefits

Challenges

Teachers require training in both content and language pedagogy.
Materials must be adapted to suit diverse learners.
Demands curriculum adaptation and cooperation.
Assessment strategies are complex as they need to consider both content and language learning.
In CLIL programs in languages other than English, transitions in the school system might be difficult, because of reduced offers.

Potential Benefits

CLIL might support the development of cognitive and intercultural skills.
CLIL can contribute to increasing students’ motivation through real-world applications of language learning.
CLIL might support students in their quest for academic and professional internationalisation.
CLIL potentially enhances the development of linguistic skills and content learning concomitantly.

Take home messages

CLIL is a powerful approach supported by European policies to integrate language and content learning.
It requires pedagogical innovation and teacher professional development.
While challenges exist, the potential benefits in language proficiency, content understanding, and intercultural competence are substantial.

Self-assessment

Multiple Choice

Open Question

Reflect on a subject you teach/learn.

How could CLIL be applied effectively?
Are there complex ideas that might become easier or harder to understand when taught in a second language?
How would you overcome such difficulties?

Resources to go further

European Commission reports on CLIL
CLIL teaching handbooks (e.g., "Good Practices in CLIL" by the European Centre for Modern Languages)
Online CLIL lesson plans and repositories
Daryai-Hansen, Petra; Koistinen, Satu; Lindemann, Beate; Moussouri, Evangelia; Poggi, Caterina (2023): CLIL in other languages than English – Successful transitions across educational stages. Council of Europe (European Centre for Modern Languages). http://www.ecml.at/CLILLOTEtransitions.

Bibliography

Bonnet, A., & Breidbach, A. (2025, forthcoming). CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning). In C. Ollivier & S. Melo-Pfeifer (Eds.), Encyclopédie de l’éducation plurilingue - Encyclopaedia of plurilingual education. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Coyle, D., Hood, P., & Marsh, D. (2010). CLIL: Content and Language Integrated Learning. Cambridge University Press.

Mehisto, P., Marsh, D., & Frigols, M. J. (2008). Uncovering CLIL: Content and Language Integrated Learning in Bilingual and Multilingual Education. Macmillan Education.

Credits

This resource has been created by Projet PEP (discuss • contribs) (Erasmus+ project, co-financed by the European Commission) :

Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer (Universität Hamburg).

Portal:Plurilingual education

	a) Using authentic materials
	b) Encouraging rote memorization without context x
	c) Providing visual support

	a) lack of specific offers to assure transition across scholarly levels
	b) students might be too young and unprepared
	c) school subjects might not be adequate to implement the CLIL approach