Introduction: The Relevance of CLIL Education in Achieving Multilingualism on the Global Stage

This chapter establishes the relevance of content-based learning in the promotion of multilingualism on the global scale. It presents an insight into content-based language teaching (CBLT) in some of the various forms it takes, particularly content and language integrated learning (CLIL). In so doing, we intend to set the scene for the present volume, which is divided into two parts. Part I provides an overview of current studies of multilingualism and CLIL. Subsequently, stemming from the pressing need for research that is empirical and longitudinal, Part II focuses on an ambitious and innovative research project, COLE (Combination of Contexts for Learning), which affords new evidence about CLIL in multilingual environments. Parts I and II are introduced in Sections 2 and 3 of the present chapter. All in all, the longitudinal, empirical and comparative research presented herein provides different perspectives regarding the impact of CLIL and has relevance, we contend, for other content-based learning contexts.