The Roles of Language in CLIL (Cambridge Language Teaching Library)

A prolific book about language that we all teachers need in order to use CLIL the proper way.

Well-written, clear and offering lots of useful examples on daily practice. I really enjoyed the way contents are displayed and how the authors tackle CLIL

Essential reading for any teacher in a content and language learning environment.

Where this is the right book for you will really depend on what you are looking for. The book uses a corpus of transcripts from CLIL classrooms in a variety of countries across Europe. Extracts from these transcripts are analysed to investigate the roles which language is used for in these CLIL classrooms. The analysis is interesting and often leads to some advice for practitioners. The advice almost never extends to 'how' a teacher could actually put things into practice in their classroom, however. If you are looking for a 'how to' manual, this is not the book for you. For example, one piece of advice is that "students should be introduced to different ways of presenting logical connections". This is important advice, but there are no indications at all as to how this might be done effectively.The analysis is carried out with reference to a number of very useful models of language. Occasionally, however, this makes the book overly theoretical in the sense that more time is expended on classifying uses of language into typologies than on analysing what really works to support student learning.It is also important to note that because the book is based on actual practice rather than ideal practice, there is a tacit assumption that classrooms are places where a 'transmissionist' approach to pedagogy is the norm. Though there are places where group work is examined ( in a very undifferentiated way), the authors largely ignore how language roles might change in a true inquiry-based classroom.