Academic Language in CLIL Settings

This chapter aims to provide a description of the educational approach this book explores, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). CLIL refers to the teaching of content subjects through an additional or foreign language. Section 1 presents the central theoretical notions that support the approach, paying particular attention to the idea of the 4Cs framework. The discussion moves then to the CLIL element explored in this book, language. Section 2 provides a theoretical description of the role of language in CLIL, considering it from two different perspectives: as a learning objective and as a resource to access subject content. Concluding the chapter, Sect. 3 narrows its focus to the development of lexical competence in CLIL, providing a comprehensive explanation of the relevance of vocabulary knowledge in CLIL and offering a review of the main studies exploring lexical development in CLIL approaches.