Language instruction in a foreign language and understanding foreign cultures

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Language instruction in a foreign language and understanding foreign cultures has aroused a great interest among many nations throughout the history. Approaches to language teaching have changed in time and nowadays, we are faced with modern classrooms in which the message communicated has become much more important than the medium of communication, and the process itself more important than the product. As a modern approach to language teaching, which rather favours the learners’ potential than the teacher input, CLIL “certainly raises the level of motivation and encourages students to use language in a meaningful way.” (Kołodziejska, Simpson, 2000:11).

Content and Language Integrated Learning

The main aim in a CLIL classroom is to introduce students to new ideas and concepts in curriculum subjects with instructions being given in a foreign language. The foreign language, in this particular case English, is used as the medium of communication. Since the emphasis is on both the language and content, the above mentioned authors find that selection, sequencing and balance of content and language are of great importance. And most importantly, they say: “learning (also language learning) is most successful in a meaningful context” (ibid.).