The language also becomes more cognitively demanding. New ideas, concepts and language are presented to the students at the same time.

A learner with good learning skills in the L1 will transfer them fairly easily to the L2, whereas a learner whose L1-medium schooling has been poor will find L2-medium learning more onerous.

 if the subject teacher has high levels of CLIL pedagogy, you can tolerate lower levels of L2 ability on the part of learners. L2-medium subject learning requires a balance of learner L2 ability and teacher L2-medium pedagogy. The lower the one, the higher the other must be. For example, young learners with zero L2 ability on entry to school have to have teachers with very good L2-medium pedagogy.

In a CLIL lesson, all four language skills should be combined. The skills are seen thus:

For teachers from an ELT background, CLIL lessons exhibit the following characteristics:

 CONCLUSIONS
These attempts to analyze and classify thinking processes move from a foundation of simpler, lower order skills to more complex higher order skills. However, there is still no consensus about the exact number of skills or levels, the interaction between them nor is it easy to analyse the level of difficulty of a particular task or the precise thinking skills required.

My experience with "proper" CLIL is non existent. But following this course it seems to me that most CLIL  that is going on is "improper" in that it is somewhat lacking from one point of view or another. As CLIL isn't just teaching content in L2, but getting students to develop CALP and use HOTS....well, being a lower secondary school teacher, all sorts of obstacles and issues come to mind. First of all...language competence. Is CLIL a viable method for students with a low level of language? It must be as so many primary teachers use it. Secondly: how can students who find it hard to tackle studying subjects in L1, develop a passion for doing it in L2? And finally, what if students have very weak LOTS, even in L1... How can they develop HOTS, and in L2 to boot??? So these for me are the weaknesses.

Even if stating CLIL strengths feels like stating the obvious...CLIL makes the lesson purposeful, expendable, interdisciplinary, appeals to students' talents and attitudes, can bypass the prejudice toward the foreign language...and it's a good change, a breath of fresh air for the language teacher! Therefore it's DEFINITELY worth having a go at it!

I did set up a classroom library and students were free to borrow and return books (graded readers in English) as they pleased, but I have to admit I just did that, I didn't build any activity around ER and didn't prepare my students for ER or check on the books they borrowed, if they actually read them or not. Therefore I doubt whether I can even consider this a proper experiment in ER, because I think that the pre-reading phase, the one where you get to know more about your students reading habits and interests is fundamental, because it makes things personal, developing good affective vibes and motivation.

As for my ER in CLIL lesson plan (Huckleberry Finn), I like the idea of using a work of fiction (one that students will hopefully be able to read unabridged when they grow up, or decide to read for pleasure in L1) to get to know more about, in my case, the United States, its territory, its most important river, its symbolic value and the consequences of river pollution on the environment. The impact of the language dimension will be strong, because they will learn to define the territory accurately, they will learn to describe and illustrate their own region (so express their local identity), they will be able to compare effective/alternative means of transport, and reflect on the benefits of a clean environment, which is something that has and will have an impact on their future and that of their families...and all this while trying to use the English language. I think that being able to use a foreign language to express what is most important to one's own life is the main goal of teaching English, or any other foreign language, because language IS identity.