CLIL & Pluriliteracies

Over the years, I’ve seen how easily students can appear “fluent” in a second language — chatting confidently with peers — yet still struggle deeply when faced with academic texts or abstract classroom discussions.

That difference lies at the heart of CLIL and the balance between BICS and CALP.

BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills) refers to the language of everyday interaction — social conversations, greetings, or classroom routines. These skills develop relatively quickly, often within 1–2 years.

CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency), on the other hand, is the language of schooling — reasoning, hypothesizing, comparing, evaluating, summarizing. Developing CALP can take five to seven years, even for motivated learners.

In a CLIL classroom, these two dimensions intersect constantly.

Students are not only learning content through another language; they’re also learning to think, reason, and communicate in that language at a deeper, more academic level.

Teaching content through another language doesn’t have to be complicated. Here are some activities I love using with students:

• Think-Pair-Share in L2: Ask a content question, students discuss in pairs using target language, then share with the class.

• Label & Explain: Students label diagrams or images and explain them aloud in the target language.

• Mini-Projects: Small group projects where students research a topic and present findings in L2 (poster, video, or skit).

• Role Plays: Students act out real-life scenarios linked to the topic, using key vocabulary and phrases.

• Interactive Quizzes: Use Kahoot, Quizlet, or classroom polling in L2 to review content and language at the same time.