You're invited to our next virtual Plurilingual Lab Speaker Series event:
Beyond “Does CLIL Work?”: Towards Multilingual Disciplinary Literacies
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has generated extensive research into its potential for supporting additional language and content learning. Drawing primarily on a series of studies conducted in a multilingual primary education setting, this presentation revisits a question that has shaped much CLIL research: does CLIL work?. During this talk, results are presented concerning different variables that potentially have an impact on the benefits of CLIl, such as intensity of CLIL programes, languages at home, attitudes, and experiences with languages outside school. Besides, teachers’ concern about content and language learning is reported. In response to it, learners’ construction of disciplinary knowledge is suggested. Finally, the presentation considers what disciplinary litearacies means for CLIL pedagogy and teacher education. More specifically, it discusses how teachers can move from simply providing exposure to an additional language towards purposefully identifying, scaffolding, and assessing the language practices through which disciplinary knowledge is constructed, while recognising the multilingual resources learners bring to the classroom.
Language of presentation: English
Speaker' bio:
Irene Guzmán Alcón is an Assistant Professor in Language Didactics at the University of Valencia. Her research focuses on third language acquisition, CLIL, disciplinary literacies, and multilingual education. She has published in international journals including Applied Pragmatics, Language, Culture and Curriculum, and Applied Linguistics Review, and with publishers such as Routledge and Multilingual Matters. She participates in national and European research projects, including the CLILNetLE COST Action.
When: October 29, 2026 (Thursday)
Time: 12pm-1:30pm (EST, Montreal)
Mode of delivery: synchronous via Zoom
Registration required. Please click here.
This is a public event and all are welcome. This Speaker Series is sponsored by Concordia University's Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, and co-organized by the BILD Research Group and McGill's Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE).
A recording will be made available on the Plurilingual Lab YouTube channel.
