How language learning can make you and your kids smarter or...

If CLIL is the answer, what are the questions?
Piet Van de Craen, Multilingual Research Unit, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

CLIL: the subject matter, such as mathematics, physics or biology, is studied in the target language.
see Wikipedia definition of CLIL Content and language integrated learning
Multilingualism a European idea but difficult to put into place.
Knowledge of grammar is not the same as being proficient in a language... same with learning only vocabulary.
Young children learn very successfully in an implicit and in an incidental way: languages, chess, music.
However adults can learn faster.
Today: new ideas, new technologies, new stakeholders.
Any language process takes time.
It is good to start early, to make use of implicit learning, do help learners.
CLIL is not a method nor a miraculous approach
Had a forerunner in Canada called Immersion.
CLIL is implemented in nearly all European countries.
Examples in Alsace (France), Estonia (with Russian), in Belgium, in Andalusia (Spain). in Spain the results are astonishing.

FAQ
What about mother tongue?
Anglicize? Russify? issues
What about traditional languages teachers?
Cognitive added-value can be found in CLIL pupils.
Brain development better with bilinguals even from seven months onwards.
Learning=creation of connections.
Visual cortex of monolinguals, early proficient bilinguals and early-late bilinguals.
The seconds are doing best for sorting out a mathematical question.
CLIL is necessarily communicative. But implicit learning is most important.
Reading: difference between difficult (French, English) and easy languages (Spanish, Dutch, Greek, Italian). CLIL pupils learned to read in an easy language become better readers.
In CLIL schools very few cases of dyslexia are reported.
CLIL a powerful learning environment, can be used also for less commonly used languages (Frisian for example)