Book review: Teaching Language and Content in Multicultural and Multilingual Classrooms: CLIL and EMI Approaches

Abstract

Human language is a very complex phenomenon that is living, breathing, and shapeshifting. As maintained by Elaine Chaika (1994), who gives a thorough explanation of the complexity of language and its uses, “Human language is multilayered.” It is composed of a system of meaningless elements that combine rules into meaningful structures. Sounds, meaningless in themselves, form meaningful words or parts of words. These words combine by rules into sentences, and sentences combine into discourses, including conversation, books, speeches, essays, and other connected sentences. Each level has its elements and rules for use, and each also relates to other levels, also by rule” (p. 7). Being multilayered, similar to a Russian nesting doll, makes language potentially complex in terms of learning and teaching. Teaching Language and Content in Multicultural and Multilingual Classrooms edited by María Luisa Carrió-Pastor and Begoña Bellés-Fortuño takes a stab at this very concept of multilayeredness. Whereas considering and evaluating the similarities and dissimilarities between Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI), this edited book peels back every single layer of language teaching in multilingual and multicultural classrooms and does it best to demystify the terms and their implications for classroom practice. The chosen explanatory point of view permits grasping wide perspectives of content-based education, counting institutional contexts of teaching and learning, language educator backgrounds, societal approaches, CLIL and EMI practices and their benefits to