The Future of Education

CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) (Coyle et al., 2010) is the most widespread approach in bilingual education programmes across Europe. Its specificity lies in the fact that students use their mother tongue and a foreign language not only as means of communication in the classroom, but also as tools for accessing the curriculum of content subjects (Llinares & Whittaker, 2012; Meyer et al., 2015). Using several languages in the process of knowledge construction results in improved plurilingual competence, deeper learning and enhanced opportunities in various spheres of public and private life (Gómez-Parra et al., 2021). This paper examines the results on students’ plurilingual competence obtained from a survey designed within the framework of the “Future of Bilingual Education” project and completed by a large sample of Spanish students (n=2808) who have been enrolled in bilingual education programmes in secondary education and at university. Two hypotheses are proposed: first, that students involved in bilingual programmes are endowed with a better plurilingual competence; and second, that these students are more motivated to learn languages. The statistical analysis of these results suggests that bilingual education programmes have a decisive impact on the students’ plurilingual competence in three areas: the learning of other languages in addition to the mother tongue, official language accreditation, and participation in international mobility experiences thanks to programmes such as Erasmus+.

Keywords: bilingual education, CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), plurilingual competence, language accreditation, mobility

REFERENCES

[1] Coyle, D., Hood, P. & Marsh, D., 2010. CLIL: content and language integrated learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

[2] Gómez-Parra, M. E., Huertas-Abril, C. A. & Espejo-Mohedano, R. 2021. Key factors to evaluate the impact of bilingual programs: Employability, mobility and intercultural awareness. Porta Linguarum, 35, pp. 93-109.

[3] Llinares, A., Morton, T. & Whittaker, R., 2012. The roles of language in CLIL. 2^nded. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

[4] Meyer, O., Coyle, D., Halbach, A., Schuck, K., & Ting, T., 2015. A pluriliteracies approach to content and language integrated learning – mapping learner progressions in knowledge construction and meaning-making. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 28(1), pp. 41-57.