Increasing growth of the European Union has given a fresh perspective and a new impetus to foreign language teaching. The globalisation of business, trade and industry necessarily demands a "working knowledge" in more than one language for everybody leaving Vocational/Professional schools and preparing for job situations across Europe, but while the need of higher levels of proficiency in foreign languages is growing, the amount of time and number of lessons spent on foreign language teaching have gone down given the pressure of other parts of the curriculum. With a fixed number of hours and the increasing need of providing teaching in new areas (such as those related to the new technologies and the acquisition of professional skills) there may just not be enough time for devoting to foreign language teaching. Therefore, new approaches are very much needed.

The implementation of CLIL in Spain , particularly in the Vocational and Professional schools, would have clear advantages:

1 - Flexibility in curricular design and time-table organisation: CLIL connects different areas of the learning curriculum into a meaningful and economic use of study time.

2 - Quantity of exposure: Using foreign languages as the medium of instruction of content subjects may be the only way of providing enough exposure to those languages in order to guarantee successful learning of two additional languages.

3 - Quality of exposure: CLIL calls for an interactive teaching style. This means that students have more opportunities to participate verbally by interacting with the teacher and other fellow-students using the L2.

4 - Motivation for learning: CLIL relies on intrinsic motivation, that is, the learners are involved in interesting and meaningful activities while using the language.

5- Boosting the career perspectives: CLIL is part of an approach geared towards internationalisation of the students.

6 - Integrating linguistic and cultural diversity: Studying a subject through the language of a different culture paves the way for understanding and tolerating different perspectives.

The potential of CLIL to support and develop plurilingual and pluricultural competence in our students has been widely reported. The next stage is to "mainstream" CLIL so that more learners become participants in effective learning communities and that such experiences will become an entitlement during Vocational/Professional education, extending to work and recreational contexts.

To fulfil this objective CLIL should be properly incorporated into the national provision for foreign language teaching. Representatives from commerce and industry also have a useful contribution to help link schools and professional field. Cooperation between policy-makers, educational authorities, working life representatives, the academic community and the teaching profession is crucial for success.

M.J. Frígols. IES 2 Cheste. Consellería de Cultura de Valencia

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