2.2. Working with texts.

2.2.1. Read the text below and do the True and False exercise.    

CLIL in History

Although the word CLIL was coined by David Marsh only in 1994, not a long time ago, CLIL as a phenomenon is not new in the world.

In the Ancient times the general practice was that when certain nations, including the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, conquered new lands, they also exported their language and culture. In most cases the official language was that of the conquerors, while their officials also had to learn the local language in order to govern their new provinces more efficiently.

Latin in all its functions in medieval societies was the dominant language and, consequently,  was thoroughly studied.  Secular written communication and all clerical communication was in Latin. But languages were learnt and used for practical purposes as well.  Students, craftsmen, artists, later traders travelled to faraway countries and learnt to communicate and ’work’ in the local language as well.  

Postconquest England, that is England after the Norman Conquest of 1066, can be taken as an example of medieval bilingual societies. The ruling class used Norman French, everyday people spoke English, as it is seen from a wellknown medieval proverb, “Jack would be a gentleman if he could speak French”. 

The importance of  languages and cultures  continued to rise in the Renaissance,  but it was later, in the 19th century that  bilingualism and multilingualism appeared as an ultimate goal in education as well. There were two important ways of learning a foreign language. Wealthy families either rented the services of a tutor (male teacher for boys) or a governess (female teacher for girls) to teach their children or they sent their children abroad to learn the chosen foreign language.

A more recently recorded fact, which can be described as the first example of modern CLIL was in 1965 in Canada. English speaking parents who were living in the French quarters of Québec were worried because they saw their children were in disadvantage with French speakers. So, they asked the Government to produce bilingual programmes in the schools. This idea apparently spread all over Canada and the rest of the world. In our modern globalized world everybody needs to learn several languages and CLIL is a very efficient and popular way to achieve this aim.  (http://www2.myoops.org/course_material/mit/NR/rdonlyres/16849F67-E52E-4F7F-A3C9-E4FAAD8259B2/0/medievalpaper.pdf)

True, or False?