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Fortanet-Gómez, I. 2013. CLIL in Higher Education: Towards a Multilingual Language Policy. Series Title: Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. 304 pp. ISBN: 9781847699350.
Centuries ago, a group of people called Akkadians moved to Mesopotamia, invaded all surrounding land called Sumeria and soon wanted to learn the language used by the conquered. The way to perform their aim was done by employing Sumerian language as a medium of tuition in some subjects such as zoology or theology, what is today denominated content learning. This fact can be considered the origin of today's CLIL, that is, Content and Language Integrated Learning.
However, it was not until the XXth century that this new approach was introduced in Europe as beneficial as well as useful for the teaching and learning of both content and language, having been referred to ever since as an alternative flexible approach to acquire an efficacious learning based upon four main principles: content, communication, cognition and culture (Coyle 2008)
CLIL in Higher Education. Towards a Multilingual Language Policy presents a theoretical support to multilingualism and multilingual education by taking the Content and Language Integrated Learning approach as the basis to instruct tertiary education students in a multilingual education policy by contextualizing a case at the bilingual Spanish-Valentian Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain.
Despite being divided into three differentiated parts, in which the first two present the foundation for the study brought about in part three, all the chapters follow a well- rounded development and progress preceded by some acknowledgements and a clear sighted introduction written by the author, to end up with an eleven-page conclusion, two annexes, references and a detailed index.
Part one, formed by two chapters, provides the reader with a theoretical background of what can be understood by multilingualism and multilingual education. Chapter one gives a general outlook on definitions stated by renown linguists such as Moore and Gajo (2009) or Aronin and Singleton (2008:4) although the absence of the expressed meaning of the term rendered by the Council of Europe deserves to be mentioned. Contrasting and comparing the study of multilingualism understood under two practices, societal and individual, follows the previously given definition as an important starting point to learn the understanding of the term "multilingualism". Not only is...