Building bridges in bilingual education - European perspectives on content and language integrated learning (CLIL): Keynote

As a result of the 'M+2' (mother tongue plus two other languages) educational policy, in many European countries, forms of bilingual education have been introduced. The past two decades show a variety of pedagogies to facilitate a communicative and functional approach to foreign language learning. In bilingual education, a substantial part of the curriculum is taught in a foreign language, thus offering more opportunities for exposure and interaction within the curriculum. Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is used as a guiding principle to support both subject matter and language learning. The presentation will address several CLIL practices in Europe, and discuss their similarities and differences with immersion education in Canada. We will discover common ground for teaching and research in related yet different educational settings.