Language Value 
http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 

December 2013, Volume 5, Number 1 pp. 156-160  
ISSN 1989-7103 

 Articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/LanguageV.2013.5.9 

156 

CLIL in Higher Education. Towards a Multilingual Language Policy 
Immaculada Fortanet-Gómez 
Multilingual Matters: Bristol, 2013. 285 pages. ISBN-13: 978-1-84769-935-0 

Reviewed by Simone Smala 
s.smala@uq.edu.au

The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia 

Immaculada Fortanet-Gómez's monograph CLIL in Higher Education. Towards a 

Multilingual Language Policy is an impressive contribution to the growing literature on 

CLIL. Setting her research in higher education, and specifically at the Universitat Jaume 

I in Castelló in the Valencian Community autonomous region in Spain, the author opens 

a discourse on the role of second, additional and foreign languages as the media of 

instruction for tertiary settings. In particular, she looks at the implementation of English 

and Valencian, a variety of Catalan, as media of instruction at the Universitat Jaume I. 

As a consequence, the book is an excellent resource and case study for academic 

researchers and university administrators seeking to understand the background of CLIL 

and multilingual education in tertiary settings. 

Part 1 of Fortanet-Gómez's book focuses on aspects of multilingualism and multilingual 

education as part of societal and individual practices, taking into account how cultural 

identities and language planning shape the social status and geographical use of 

languages. The author reviews the existing literature extensively, and provides an 

overview of worldwide examples. One interesting concept referred to during this first 

part of the book is the M-Factor. A relatively new term coined by Herdina and Jessner 

(2002) to capture the specific characteristics of multilinguals, it is revisited here at 

different points in the book to continue a conversation about what is special about 

multilingual individuals and their metalinguistic awareness. While much of the 

multilingualism debate explores the political, societal and individual relationships to 

different local languages, English stands out in the book as a priority language based on 

its lingua franca status worldwide. Interestingly, the author analyses how English was 

for a long time a sign of elite multilingualism in Spain, and only in recent decades has 

been adopted as the major non-local language learnt in schools. 

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Fortanet-Gómez then introduces her chapter on multilingual education with the 

statement that “multilingual education develops in response to a conscious policy within 

the language planning of a society” (p. 22) to build or maintain societal multilingualism 

in a world characterised by global flows of people and ideas. She engages with different 

influencing factors for multilingual education, from the “ethnic revolution” (Fishman 

1977, quoted here) to individual factors such as socio-economic background and 

academic ability, and questions of pedagogy and achievement outcomes (language, 

literacy, content).  

An interesting contribution of this book is the continuation of a “mapping-out” of 

differences between different multilingual education approaches, in the spirit of the 

differentiation between CLIL and immersion as proposed by Lasagabaster and Sierra 

(2010). Fortanet-Gómez situates the beginnings of awareness of ‘language’ in education 

in the Language Across the Curriculum approach advocating the inclusion of first 

language instruction across all school subjects. The author then examines how English 

for Academic Purposes (EAP) is an example for second language instruction supporting 

content studies across the academic spectrum for students studying through the medium 

of English as a second or foreign language. A related concept, Content Based 

Instruction, was developed to help limited English proficiency students in American 

schools, whereas the immersion concept usually assumes that the second language is 

only used in the classroom.  

CLIL is introduced as serving the European need to produce multilingual speakers who 

can communicate proficiently, rather than necessarily aiming for balanced bilingualism. 

The author goes into much detail to delineate the origins and approaches of CLIL and 

contributes to the debate by developing an argument of where and how CLIL can work 

in higher education. 

In Part 2, the book then moves on to multilingualism in Higher Education. Her case 

study, the Universitat Jaume I, while specific in some aspects, is typical for many other 

higher education institutions set in multilingual contexts across Europe and beyond, 

often catering for a state language, a regional language and an international language. 

Fortanet-Gómez examines policy development in a multilingual socio-political context, 

taking into account linguistic imperialism, linguistic human rights, and language and 

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power. Her examples from European, Asian and South- African universities show the 

complexities of different language demands when CLIL is introduced into the tertiary 

setting.  

The book also engages with the questions of what types of language, and language 

functions, CLIL in higher education needs to incorporate. The author investigates the 

roles of language as medium of instruction, as well as target of education, and considers 

the different discourses students and teachers are developing in tertiary CLIL 

classrooms, and as researchers faced with the overwhelming dominance of English. 

This is followed by a general overview of pedagogy in higher education, and how CLIL 

interacts with this context, for example by influencing if and how students engage 

verbally in lectures and seminars. Quoting Snow et al (1989), Fortanet-Gómez 

concludes, for language as a target of education, that “academic discourse is what is 

needed to participate in classroom activities, so the use of the target languages as media 

of instruction provides the motivation and opportunity for meaningful communication” 

(p.149). 

Part 2 finishes with a look at the “Human Factor” , examining the background of 

contemporary students and lecturers in tertiary settings, and pointing out that 

universities have become a mass education system with highly diverse, including 

linguistically diverse, student populations. The author points out that while academics 

needs to consider different pedagogical approaches in higher education, in CLIL they 

are also always language teachers – just like primary or secondary teachers in CLIL 

programmes. Interestingly, the author also considers the role of administrative staff, 

alerting the reader to the reality that internationalisation efforts like CLIL involve the 

whole university.  

In the third part of her book, Fortanet-Gómez introduces her own study of the 

Universitat Jaume I, which focuses on the new multilingual language policy at the 

university. The author sets out to investigate the conditions for this new policy, and 

includes profiles and interviews of university community members, as well as an 

analysis of the institutional context and other internal and external factors impacting on 

the implementation of the policy. In her study, she found that only about one third of the 

undergraduate students report being able to do highly demanding tasks in English, with 

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most of them having Spanish or Valencian as their first language. Chapters 7 and 8 of 

the book are, in general, dedicated to offering a detailed description of the language 

situation in Spain and how this influences local practices and attitudes at the Universitat 

Jaume I. In Chapter 9, the author then assesses her findings in the context of CLIL 

theories and the socio-political factors presented earlier, and proceeds to recommend 

policy steps and strategies to support the successful implementation of CLIL at the 

Universitat Jaume I.  

The conclusion at the end of the book is, at least in parts, a summary and justification of 

the chapters. However, there are also some important conclusions drawn from the study. 

Among these is the observation that language skills in Valencian, largely used as a 

family language only, might actually increase if more attention were given to it through 

CLIL and immersion programmes. Related to this observation is her emphasis on the 

relevance of building an ethos of multilingualism that accepts the same status for all 

languages in use, particularly in times when economic difficulties might infringe on 

material costs and benefits. Furthermore, there is a strong statement in the author’s 

conclusions that the development of cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) 

in English needs more attention through dedicated preparatory courses, potentially for 

students, academics, and administrative staff alike.  

At the end of the book, Fortanet-Gómez informs the reader that in her capacity as vice-

rector of the Universitat Jaume I, she implemented a multilingual language plan for the 

university, parallel to writing the book. I can fully support her suggestion that the book 

will be inspiring “to those who are responsible for the design and implementation of 

multilingual language policies” (p. 246). Furthermore, as an academic and researcher, I 

found this book an exciting new contribution to the research field of CLIL, 

convincingly filling an epistemological gap, i.e. the use of CLIL in tertiary settings, and 

mapping and designating the areas this research focus can explore in the future.  

REFERENCES  
Fishman, J.A. 1977. “Language and ethinicity. In Giles, H. (Ed.) Language, Ethnicity 

and Intergroup Relations. London: Academic Press, 15-57. 

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Language Value 5 (1), 156–160  http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 160 

Herdina, P. and Jessner, U. 2002. A Dynamic Model of Multilingualism. Perspectives 

of Change in Psycholinguistics. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. 

Lasagabaster, D. and Sierra, J.M. 2010. “Immersion and CLIL in English: more 

differences than similarities”. ELT Journal 64 (4), 367-375. 

Snow, M.A., Met, M. And Geneese, F. 1989. “A conceptual framework for the 

integration of language and content in second/foreign language instruction”. 

TESOL Quarterly 23, 201-217. 

Received: 30 October 2013 

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