LEARN Journal: Language Education and Acquisition Research Network

ISSN: 2630-0672 (Print) | ISSN: 2672-9431 (Online)

Volume: 16, No: 1, January – June 2023
Language Institute, Thammasat University
https://so04.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/LEARN/index

Book Review

Teaching Language and Content in Multicultural

and Multilingual Classrooms: CLIL and EMI
Approaches

Edited by María Luisa Carrió-Pastor and Begoña

Bellés-Fortuño

Hengzhi Hu

[email protected], Faculty of Education, Universiti Kebangsaan

Malaysia, Malaysia

Received Book Title: Teaching Language and Content in

21/05/2022
Multicultural and Multilingual Classrooms:
Received in revised CLIL and EMI Approaches
form
18/08/2022
Editors: María Luisa Carrió-Pastor and Begoña
Accepted Bellés-Fortuño
01/09/2022)
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Year of Publication: 2021

ISBN: 978-3-030-56614-2
 Hu (2023), pp. 753-758
Teaching Language and Content in Multicultural and Multilingual
Classrooms: CLIL and EMI Approaches

María Luisa Carrió-Pastor and Begoña Bellés-Fortuño

Around the globe, various instructional settings and disciplines of

studies are using English as a lingua franca for educational purposes, even
though it is not the first language of all participants. Against this backdrop,
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and English-Medium
Instruction (EMI) have gained widespread currency in multilingual socio-
educational contexts, the implementation of which is not only a promise of
satisfactory learning outcomes but also a way to pursue internationalization.
In order to establish the extent to which these two methodologies promote
learning of various sorts, the academia is appealing for a more systematic
comparison of CLIL and EMI (Pecorari, 2020). To this end, the current book,
Teaching Language and Content in Multicultural and Multilingual Classrooms: CLIL
and EMI Approaches, serves as an insightful update to the field on the topic,
linking state-of-the-art theories with empirical findings.
This book is an edited collection of fourteen papers brought by
eminent researchers who attempt to offer an authentic understanding of the
rationale and implementation of CLIL compared to EMI. The first
introductory chapter provides a detailed account of the context and
composition of this book, topicalizing several issues for the entire volume,
such as teacher education, professional development, and curriculum design.
This chapter allows readers to understand the state of the art in CLIL and
EMI pedagogies. While acknowledging the debate on the comparison of
CLIL and EMI, the author particularly spotlights the objective of this book,
which is to offer an authentic rationale for CLIL compared with some EMI
practices. This brings CLIL and EMI together and encourages an updated
reflection upon the whole educational scenario related to content-based
programs.
Following this is the book’s first section, including two chapters about
CLIL and EMI. It begins with Chapter 2, which compares CLIL and EMI
thoroughly from essential educational perspectives. It provides a clear-cut
answer to the blurred boundaries between CLIL and EMI, with a solid
theoretical foundation established for the entire book. The author proposes
that both approaches follow similar methodologies and objectives of
motivating learners and improving their language proficiency. Recognizing
some long-established differences between these approaches (e.g., CLIL has
a dual focus on content and language learning in contrast to EMI, which
merely considers content learning), the author also highlights and supposes
that CLIL and EMI should be implemented in different academic situations
LEARN Journal: Vol. 16, No. 1 (2023) Page 754
 Hu (2023), pp. 753-758
or educational stages as per learners’ language proficiency. This intriguing
thought positions these approaches in a whole educational scenario. The
other chapter, Chapter 3, reports an empirical study done with a convenient
sample of CLIL and EMI teachers. Embedded in a qualitative paradigm, the
researchers probe educators’ thoughts and experiences to disclose the
benefits and challenges of content-based programs.
The second book section highlights the internationalized context of
English being the lingua franca and thus underlines the investigation of EMI.
It reports five empirical studies conducted in multilingual contexts, four in
Europe and the remaining in Hong Kong. This section covers a variety of
topics, including interculturality in higher education (Chapter 4), pre-service
teachers’ experience with using English as the medium of instruction
(Chapter 5), university students’ and teachers’ perceptions of EMI programs
(Chapters 6 and 7), and EMI project design and development for academic
purposes (Chapter 8). In contrast, the last section of this book brings CLIL
across different educational levels to the fore, offering practical implications
drawn from various socio-educational contexts to assist teachers in
implementing successful bilingual programs. To this end, this section includes
five studies conducted in the European context, emphasizing the
organization of CLIL programs in secondary schools (Chapter 9), pre-service
teachers’ experience with CLIL for early education (Chapter 10), professional
collaboration between content and language teachers in higher education
(Chapter 11), professional training for CLIL teachers in primary schools
(Chapter 12), and assessment issues at different levels of education (Chapters
10 and 13).
Impressively, these chapters have connected a wide range of
theoretical perspectives with rigorous research designs, involving various
participants (e.g., students, pre- and in-service teachers, lecturers) and eliciting
different types of empirical evidence (e.g., affective evidence about
stakeholders’ perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs, performance evidence on
learning outcomes, process and task evidence concerning classroom
instructions). They aim to exemplify the issues that may arise from every
possible aspect of CLIL and EMI implementation across different levels of
education and yield practical insights for a variety of stakeholders (e.g.,
researchers, in-service and pre-service teachers, teacher trainers) who desire
to enhance the quality standards of CLIL and EMI. This expectation is
highlighted in the last chapter, which summarizes the aim of this volume and
features the issues of interest that should rivet special attention from both
educators and researchers, such as the challenges of English-taught programs,
the need for teacher training, new practices of implementing CLIL and EMI,
etc.

LEARN Journal: Vol. 16, No. 1 (2023) Page 755

 Hu (2023), pp. 753-758
The book is written and formatted in a way that the flow is engaging,
with additional information available whenever needed. Throughout the
volume, the following contributions are assumed to be particularly important:
First, many chapters have emphasized teachers’ professional development,
which not only elucidates the potential foci of their professional needs but
also fills the gap that there is a paucity of research on these topics of interest
(Cammarata & Ceallaigh, 2020); Second, some chapters focus on different
approaches to curriculum design, and the presented challenges and
opportunities confronting CLIL and EMI stakeholders can be taken as the
direction “for cultural maintenance, for knowledge development and
technical skill-building and for renewal of social life in local and global
communities” (Mickan & Wallace, 2020, p. 7); Third, this book has a dual
focus on both CLIL and EMI and is one of the few initiatives to link them
up, which is an attempt to fulfil the expectation that “the convergence
between CLIL and EMI research needs to be built upon in order to continue
pushing the research agenda forward” (Pérez Cañado, 2021, p. 173). Such
innovation in presenting the academia with solid theories and empirical
evidence on both CLIL and EMI is insightful and is a significant move
forward compared to some recent leading publications about either CLIL or
EMI, which have mentioned the need to position these approaches into a
whole educational agenda (e.g., Khalyapina, 2020; Molino et al., 2022). For
researchers, the academic innovation of this book can help them re-examine
the language teaching methodologies and connect them to a broader research
agenda. For educators, the rich and readable experience from the book can
help them identify the essential issues to be emphasized when applying CLIL
and EMI in classrooms. Although the target audience may obtain different
insights from this book, they are heading toward the same goal of offering
quality education and preparing the educational community for the innovative
pedagogical experience which embraces a foreign language medium across
the curriculum.
Although the collected papers have only focused on English-
instructed education, which may immediately form an association with a
monolingual English-dominant mindset, the contributors are embracing the
contemporary reality of multilingualism and multiculturalism of education.
Nevertheless, a minor limitation that may appear somewhat dissatisfying is
that the general scope of this book is not multilingual enough. Overall, the
book has focused on different European contexts, which are indeed the place
that has witnessed the birth and rise of CLIL, EMI, and most multilingual
practices. With only one paper contextualized out of Europe, however, voices
from different socio-educational contexts are recommended to enrich the
knowledge about English-taught programs and promote globalized
multilingualism. This appeal, though personal, is rationalized by that
LEARN Journal: Vol. 16, No. 1 (2023) Page 756
 Hu (2023), pp. 753-758
numerous countries and regions outside Europe have embraced CLIL and
EMI in their own contexts with varied outcomes (Christison & Murray,
2022), the understanding of which can promote the evolvement and maturity
of relevant research and educational programs in relation to a broader
research base. The voices coming from Asian educational contexts are vital
on account of the currency that CLIL and EMI have enjoyed in multilingual
Asia, as well as the mounting concern whether the experience and lessons
gained from Europe can be directly transplanted to Asia “irrespective of the
socio-political, cultural and linguistic parameters that are involved in language
policy implementation” (Zhang & Zheng, 2019, p. 28).

About the Author

Hengzhi Hu: A Ph.D. candidate at the Faculty of Education, Universiti

Kebangsaan Malaysia. He has been working as a language teacher in diverse
international contexts with a language education background. His current
research is mainly in the area of Content and Language Integrated Learning.
ORCid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5232-913X

References

Cammarata, L., & Ceallaigh, T. J. Ó. (Eds.). (2020). Teacher education

and professional development for immersion and content-based
instruction. John Benjamins B.V.
Christison, M., & Murray, D. E. (2022). What English language teachers
need to know Volume III: Designing curriculum (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Khalyapina, L. (Ed.). (2020). Examining Content and Language
Integrated Learning (CLIL) theories and practices. IGI Global.
Mickan, P., & Wallace, I. (2020). Language education curriculum
designs: Voices for uncertain times. In P. Mickan & I. Wallace
(Eds.), The Routledge handbook of language education curriculum design (pp.
3-7). Routledge.
Molino, A., Dimova, S., Kling, J., & Larsen, S. (2022). The evolution of
EMI research in European higher education. Taylor & Francis.
Pecorari, D. (2020). English medium instruction: Disintegrating
language and content? In J. King & S. Dimova (Eds.),
Integrating content and language in multilingual universities (pp. 15-36).
Springer.

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 Hu (2023), pp. 753-758
Pérez Cañado, M. L. (2021). CLIL-ising EMI: An analysis of student
and teacher training needs in monolingual contexts. In C.
Hemmi & D. L. Banegas (Eds.), International perspectives on CLIL (pp.
171-192). Springer.
Zhang, T., & Zheng, Y. (2019). English is the default language? A study
of international students’ language needs in Chinese higher
education context. In F. Fang & H. P. Widodo (Eds.), Critical
perspectives on global Englishes in Asia: Language policy, curriculum,
pedagogy and assessment (pp. 27-44). Multilingual Matters.

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