1.1. What are the driving forces behind CLIL?

There are two major reasons which support the interest in CLIL. These
involve reactive (responding to situations) and proactive (creating
situations):

Reactive reasons: Language situation in some countries

Proactive reasons: European policies

1.2. Why is CLIL relevant in contemporary education and

teaching profession?
The forces of the global change, converging technologies and
adaptability to the Knowledge Age present challenges for education,
especially they present challenges for the learning and teaching of second
languages, not just English, but also other minorities, regional or heritage
languages.
Improving the quality of Foreign Language teaching, as seen
in the following aspects:
1. Using

the

foreign

language

as the

medium of

instruction

and

communication makes the teacher more aware of the learners linguistic

needs and triggers tuned-in strategic language behavior (for example,
teachers strategies to make input comprehensible and context embedded).
2. The need for constant comprehension checks on the part of the teacher
results in high levels of communication between teachers and learners (and
among learners themselves).
3. CLIL fosters implicit and incidental learning by focusing on meaning and
communication, and providing great amounts of input, while at the same
time the FL class can keep a complementary focus-on-form approach in the
needed language areas.
4. CLIL fosters fluency, whereas the typical FL teaching tends to focus on
accuracy

5. CLIL stretches the learners language and language learning potential

through, for example, pushing learners to produce meaningful and complex
language.
6. The need of visual and other types of support for CLIL classes makes the
teacher aware of the more general need of cognitive and interactional
support that foreign language learners, particularly younger learners,
require.
7. The quality of FL teaching is also improved through the implementation of
team -work and/or tandem teaching, which require from the FL teacher a
continuous reflection on and elaboration of his/her teaching practices.

Increasing the number of Foreign Language

speakers/learners:
1. Learners benefit from higher quality teaching and from input that is
meaningful and understandable.
2. CLIL may strengthen learners ability to process input, which prepares
them for higher-level thinking skills, and enhances cognitive development.
3. In CLIL, literacy development takes place in the first language, which is
cognitively beneficial for the child. Later, literacy skills will transfer to the
additional languages.
4. In CLIL the learners affective filter may be lower than in other situations,
for learning takes place in a relatively anxiety-free environment.
5. Learners motivation to learn content through the foreign language may
foster and sustain motivation towards learning the foreign language itself.