Ana Mara Collado Lpez

My personal opinion about CLIL: positive and negative features

Nowadays, we live in a society where learning a second language is essential, and
this is where English plays an important role since it is considered the lingua franca.
Therefore, as it is becoming very important, it may be a language that many people will
know in the future. In this way, CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) has
emerged as one of the most popular methodologies to use in schools, consisting of an
innovative educational methodology where the content is taught to students through a
second language (which is English, generally) instead of the mother tongue. CLIL is
considered a trend in education since children can learn both contents and a second
language at the same time. However, we must ask ourselves several questions: Is it really
useful for students? What are the benefits and limitations of CLIL in our country? Do we
use CLIL to follow other European educational models as a matter of prestige?
I clearly think that CLIL is an original methodology for students as it lets them to
have a wider exposure to the target language and develop oral communication skills at
the same time they learn the contents. Thus, it can motivate much more students because
they learn in a different way than they are used to and can see better the different cultural
and linguistic features that this new language has. Moreover, as learning new languages
is becoming a necessary requisite to have a job, it can enhance their possibilities to find
a job in their future.
Nevertheless, we must be conscious about some drawbacks that this educational
methodology can have. It has been argued that teacher has fewer hours to teach their
contents because of CLIL methodology so it can be dangerous. Teachers have to
distribute their time on the contents and the second language evenly, so focusing solely
on language and leaving aside certain aspects of the subject is a risk that students cannot
take.
Furthermore, another problem is related to assessment. Teachers have problems
to decide whether they should assess the contents of their subjects, language or both.
Sometimes, there are teachers that are not well-prepared to teach their contents using the
target language because they have not been trained to do so. Hence, if they are poorly
instructed in that second language, how are they going to assess students in a proper way?
Thus, I think teachers must be provided with a proper training in the target language and
a clear guidance to use this methodology.
We must take into account another problem related to students. Some students
may not be so skilful in this new language as we think, so they can have problems to

Ana Mara Collado Lpez

follow the class. They do not only learn the language but also its cultural baggage so there
are concepts they may find hard to understand. In this case, it will be better if they start
this methodology in lower levels (such as primary school) and go step by step until they
move closer to the language.
Finally, regarding the idea to use CLIL to follow other European countries
models, it can be said that although this is a good methodology to become more integrated
in European programmes and achieve better competences in the field of education, we do
not have to follow this trend only because we want to look like other educational systems
or to have more prestige.
I think that if we want to change our educational system to improve it, we have to
start from the roots and ask ourselves what the things we need to change are, and why we
need to change them. In Spain, the average people who speak English is very low, and
even teachers are not prepared to teach their contents in English at schools. Therefore,
why should we take new educational trends if we are not qualified to do so? And if
teachers have to follow CLIL, why does the government not invest money in training
them to do their job properly? Consequently, I think that there are many factors to bear
in mind before carrying out CLIL. I agree it is a very useful methodology to employ in a
classroom but as long as we have the appropriate tools and knowledge to do so.