European bilingual models beyond lingua franca: key findings from CLIL French programs

Abstract

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has expanded all around the continent following European Council guidelines, favored by competence studies that identified educational systems as a strong determinant for second language gains and deficits. Over the years since the turn of the century, CLIL has gained the support of language policy and research but the model has also come under fire for its possible elitism, for the alleged lack of fundamental research behind it and for its conspicuous favoring of English-medium school, a result that flies in the face of European multilingualism. This study provides results that put an end to the empirical vacuum of how European bilingual programs function in languages other than English and the outcomes delivered when the language of instruction is French. The study presents results of the first cohort of students leaving the CLIL/EMILE program after 12 years of French instruction. Results also show and interpret the effects of multilingual programs through (inter)national languages like French in monolingual areas of Southern of Europe, most precisely in Andalusia, Southern Spain.