Globalization has brought increasing contact among people from different nationalities and every day it’s more common to see people studying and working in a foreign country.
Consequently a new approach to the learning of foreign language has been proposed. This is Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and is based on the idea that students can learn a subject matter, such as history, geography through the medium of a foreign language and at the same time acquire the language within the classroom boundaries.
When learners like a topic they are motivated to communicate in the foreign language and this way students develop the language naturally. Level and grading are not important and grammar is not taught directly. Fluency is more important than accuracy.
This approach provides opportunity to use the language immediately instead of waiting for a future opportunity and it helps those who have already failed in the general English courses.
CLIL is currently applied in immersion programmes in USA and in a few schools in Europe to students between 7 and 16. That means it is used in schools because CLIL is long-term learning programme and students are expected to become proficient in English after 5-7 years in a good bilingual programme.
This objective is easy to achieve in multilingual classes where students have to use the foreign language to communicate not only with the teacher but with his classmates as well but in monolingual classes lots of conscious learning will take place.
In countries where general English courses predominate, you can start using this trend gently. Make your students develop the four skills as usual and train them to become excellent readers so they can scan and skim efficiently informative texts about different subjects.
And to reinforce the work done in the classroom, and have a chance to put into practice what they have learnt, students can attend a short course in an English-speaking country while they are still in high school.