What is CLIL?

Motivation works in both directions: high motivation is one factor that encourages successful learning; in reverse, successful learning encourages high motivation.

Cook (2001)

A foreign language is used as a tool in the learning of a non-language subject in which both language and subject have a joint role (Marsh 2002:58). 
The adoption of a specific term was a move towards defining more clearly the nature of
CLIL midst a plethora of related approaches such as content-based instruction, immersion, bilingual education and so on. Whilst CLIL shares certain aspects of learning and teaching with these, in essence it operates along a continuum of the foreign language and the non-language content without specifying the importance of one over another.