THEORETICAL PROPOSAL: EXPLORING THE SYMBIOSIS OF CLIL AND PBL TO FOSTER AN INTERCULTURAL LEARNING EXPERIENCE IN EFL PROPUESTA TEÓRICA: EXPLORAR LA SIMBIOSIS DE AICLE Y ABP PARA FOMENTAR UNA EXPERIENCIA DE APRENDIZAJE INTERCULTURAL

To meet educational goals for moving forward in the context of the 21st century, educators and researchers have long embarked on the quest to explore and structure different teaching methods, models, and strategies to contribute to better teaching practices and to better understand what factors come into play in the inter dynamics of teaching and learning. Pursuing a learning experience efficacy where learners can grow academically, professionally, and as human beings, (aware, connected, interested, mindful, and actively involved) is a constant and permanent quest in educational settings. For the case built here, two teaching approaches are explored to enhance intercultural communicative competence and the implicit language progression in the foreign or second language classroom. CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) and PBL (Project Based Learning) principles have the conditions to advocate for language enhancement, interculture, and real-life meaningfulness in the learning experience. It is suggested that by merging CLIL and PBL learning principles a learning structure for potentially mediating intercultural communicative competence can be sustained. The theoretical principles from both approaches are to be integrated according to the specific teaching context needs, curriculum, population, and language level to be met. Karol Viviana Cubero Vásquez Páginas/ Pages 267-288 Cubero Vásquez, Karol Viviana (2021). Theoretical Proposal: Exploring the symbiosis of CLIL and PBL to foster an intercultural learning experience in EFL. DEDiCA. REVISTA DE EDUCAÇÃO E HUMANIDADES, N.o 19, 2021, 267-288. ISSN: 2182-018X. DOI: http://doi.org/10.30827/dreh.vi19.21829 268


Introduction
To meet educational goals for moving forward in the context of the 21st century, educators and researchers have long embarked on the quest to explore and structure different teaching methods, models, and strategies to contribute to better teaching practices and to better understand what factors come into play in the inter dynamics of teaching and learning. Pursuing learning experience efficacy where learners can grow academically, professionally, and as human beings, (aware, connected, interested, mindful, and actively involved) is a constant and permanent quest in educational settings.
The need to change teaching practices has always been motivated by the rapid global-local transformations and the fact that generations have also changed, portraying different needs, preferences, and drives. According to Kahn (1990), educators have always been interested in designing new curricula or modifying the current ones for a differentiated kind of learning that stresses skills. For Luther (2000), new methods of learning are required to emphasize collaborative learning, explicit course criteria of competency and dynamism where students are led to cultivate higher-order thinking skills, critical thinking, a sense of learners' community to support each other and understand the complexities of knowledge issues and problems, as well as recognizing the importance of alternative approaches to solutions while interacting in a respectful learning environment where they see themselves as enthusiastic participants.
Selecting a teaching approach is expected to be a wellexamined and reflected task in which the curriculum, contextual factors, global scenarios, social, and technological elements are to be weighted. The available literature in this sense has led to pondering as an alternative for meeting this objective, turning into, or building contextualized practices by combing learning methods, methodologies, or approaches to potentially enrich the learning experience, which happens to be unique to the context and the participants involved.
A teaching methodology/ approach is outlined in its comprehensive theoretical extends as a set of principles and instructional strategies that direct, motivate, and stimulate learning, change, and development in terms of cognition and language, content, and culture throughout the educational process in each scenario. The objective of a methodology/ approach serves to delineate the route and the constituents that would direct the teaching and learning destination. It is in that broad perspective that the claim of combining two learning approaches deploy a repertoire of learning strategies, techniques, and principles to be merged into . Theoretical Proposal: Exploring the symbiosis of CLIL and PBL to foster an intercultural learning experience in EFL. DEDiCA. REVISTA DE EDUCAÇÃO E HUMANIDADES, N.º 19, 2021, 267-288 the mediation of the learning process to influence the learner, the educator, the process, and the context. For the case built here, two teaching approaches are explored to enhance intercultural communicative competence and the implicit language progression in the foreign/second language. language classroom. CLIL and PBL principles have the conditions pinpointed by researchers who advocate targeting language enhancement, culture, and context-related, real-life meaningfulness and directing a learning experience based on achieving competence.
In the argument of reciprocal enhancement, PBL can be maximized by devoting more direct focus on building a base for content, cognition, communication, and cultural connections through the project stages of learning by doing. Alternatively, CLIL's model of the 4Cs can be highlighted and strengthened by project integration in the teaching-learning process. As suggested here, the theoretical principles from both approaches are to be used according to the specific teaching context needs, curriculum, population, and educational level.
It is suggested that by merging CLIL and PBL learning principles a learning structure for potentially fostering intercultural communicative competence can be sustained along with other learning benefits.

CLIL and PBL: Principles Symbiosis
Considering the theoretical tendencies around learning and the significant contributions the field of neuroscience is generating to understand how the brain functions and how humans learn is that now there are more means to establish a rapport for essential aspects that play a substantial role in learning. One of the observations pinpointed about the brain is that it feeds on enjoyable, novel, and meaningful experiences. That is why there is a general agreement on the notion of the learner as the center of the teaching experience and on the need to present a learning structure that is dynamic and enjoyable.
When exploring the potentialities of CLIL and PBL, it is noticeable that intent to provide novelty and significance which has a clear connection to their core principles. Incorporating these . Theoretical Proposal: Exploring the symbiosis of CLIL and PBL to foster an intercultural learning experience in EFL. DEDiCA. REVISTA DE EDUCAÇÃO E HUMANIDADES, N.º 19, 2021, 267-288 These two approaches may serve to contextualize units for foreign/second language teaching and learning with extended learners' possibilities of using the target language while taking this process towards a more committed compromise toward intercultural communicative competence.
Connections between CLIL and PBL in the context of foreign or second language learning respond to what modern societies and learners need and demand in terms of the current times, technology revolution, key knowledge, skills, competences, and professional training.
Both teaching frameworks place great importance on learner-centeredness, learner autonomy, meaningful and authentic tasks, purposeful communication, and the need for language use in real contexts in which language becomes a vehicle to perform, learn, and work over the content from which key competences can be built. In PBL, learning outcomes are linked to creating a product in collaboration with peers and the educator, which directly connects to social skills, creation, and active participation. In CLIL, outcomes are connected to the level of engagement in communication, cognitive thinking, scaffolding, and participation throughout varied learning tasks.
These two similar but divergent learning modes advance and pursue a narrative of authenticity and active learning. PBL and CLIL principles in connection provide scenarios for an enhanced teaching and learning process since both perceive the learning needed for modernity as it is complex, flexible, authentic, and multidevelopmental, seeking to foster competences and skills to interrelate cognition and communication in the real world. Moreover, these models consider content, culture, context, language, and communication as key factors to generate teaching and learning effectiveness. In this regard, Diez-Olmedo (2020) highlighted that the combination of PBL and CLIL stands for an integral module in fostering learners' diverse developmental matters.

Content
CLIL is content-driven. Content in CLIL relates to the advancement in knowledge, skills, and curriculum-related elements. This advancement is also reflected in learners' performance when portraying their own interpretations and construction of knowledge from what is absorbed from stimulus and the environment. Content is structured around the contextual and real-life, which allows success in retaining content (Ravitz, 2010). Content in CLIL can be treated as subject objectives or theme-based in which language, content, context, and culture are inextricably connected. From this sustained connection, the design of the learning experience is to be carefully built and planned. Dale and Tanner claimed (2012) that integrating content and language brings various benefits to English language classes that match those connected to PBL. The combination of PBL and CLIL ensures that knowledge acquisition originates from research, interdisciplinary areas, negotiation, and collaboration (Sánchez-Palacios, 2017). It seems that having both approaches at service for experiential language acquisition and language learning would signify advances in using language to convey message and meaning. As reported by Marsh and Frigols (2012) content in CLIL is worked and acquired through flexible content-driven tasks. In CLIL, learners can access a cross-curricular approach to knowledge constructed through the 4Cs framework: context, communication, content, culture (or community, which involves the context), and cognition (Coyle et al., 2009;MacGregor, 2016). CLIL benefits from PBL when approaching more explicit attention to the what, why, and how of content-based approaches motivated directly by learners' interests and needs. Therefore, content material can also be developed through the process of conducting projects. PBL has shown efficacy in helping learners achieve learning objectives, get deeper content understanding, apply knowledge, and improve academic performance. This is connected to the quality of time and contact established to an immediate familiar source of information, input, content exposure, and observations, questions, and independent inquiry. As a result, higher and sustained levels of language and learning engagement and knowledge retention are accomplished. Project activities and the whole process conducted take on what Krashen (1985) believed to be an important factor in  learning additional languages, foreign or second language acquisition, the comprehensible input, through any linguistic skills and different types of activities and resources.
With the teacher's help, students can make sense of it. Aside from this, content is a constant source of learning in PBL. Throughout the process, learners learn new vocabulary, ideas, and enhance their views. Since content can be from various topics, culture finds a niche as well.
Interestingly, CLIL and PBL can cultivate, through varied content tasks, a symbiosis to enable learners to construct knowledge and acquire key competencies such as the intercultural communicative competence, fostering and improving the target language by talking and engaging in communicative tasks.

Communication
A key core principle shared by the two learning methodologies is the role of language and communication. Therefore, both methodologies have as a major objective the improvement, training, and development of communicative skills in the target language. This objective is not simplistically limited to the act of sustaining a conversation; it should be more ambitious, as language and communication are privileged instruments to mediate relevant interdisciplinary content imbued with intercultural nuances.
The CLIL approach utilizes a multilingual approach while PBL confers language acquisition relevance through authentic means. Language in PBL is used progressively along the process on an inquiry community basis. Both CLIL and PBL are after meaningful and purposeful communication. Learners are encouraged to get involved in real communication by completing authentic tasks in a relatively natural context that requires genuine language use (Haines, 1989;Levine, 2004). This symbiosis can excel the need for adopting strategies that help in shaping better communicative engagements through the usage of tools which foster interaction with people from different cultural affiliations. This needs to be conceived as integral communication which concerns fruitful interactions for the real world.   Coyle et al. (2010) see language in three ways: the language of learning (the language needed to access the body of content) the language for learning (the language that grants functionality), and the language through learning (the language acquired along the teaching-learning process). This indicates that a kind of enhanced communication can be derived after working these three vertices. In CLIL, communication is about language learning and language using. Therefore, language is conducive to interpolate on language forms of know-how and know-why to assume a role that intends to reach a real, consequential outcome toward developing communicative skills. It becomes a vehicle (Marsh & Frigols, 2012) serving multiple purposes. This notion is tremendously appealing in the field of language acquisition and learning due to the idea that during the process various mental processes take place. This kind of language cognizing and language acquisition better occurs in a stimulus rich context. In the PBL learning experience, students work through projects to nurture their knowledge and real-life communicative skills, grounded in negotiation and decision making. Based on Thomas (2000), PBL allows learners to be interested in ideas, train opinions, and negotiation techniques and resolutions. PBL learners foster language development via various communicative tasks and steps taken during the project stages. Hence, project work contributes to language growth in several ways.
In this light, regarding language acquisition and learning, a concurrent beneficial relationship is noticed between PBL and CLIL. For example, oral delivery and practice are a constant in both models; learners get various invitations to improve and use the target language differently. Having projects and meaningful tasks approaching relevant content suggest a suitable course of action to facilitate a considerable number of opportunities for the students to receive rich, varied, interesting input to encourage output and extended sustained production to reassure students meet that objective in CLIL. PBL learners need support and guided analysis for the emergent linguistic requests will be encountered during activities and tasks implementation. In the words of Marsh and Frigols (2012), language appropriateness is vital to meet the linguistic demands of content, so students are encouraged to use the language while adjusting language domains. In CLIL, language is learned and  practiced over the idea of functionality; studies reveal that CLIL has proven to affect favorably receptive skills, vocabulary, fluency, and morphology while other language areas are less affected, such as syntax, writing, pragmatics, and pronunciation (Dalton-Puffer & Smit, 2007). In PBL, problematic language areas are addressed to prepare students to meet language challenges and are accompanied along the way. In the model, all language skills are exercised and enhanced, including vocabulary and structures (Stoller, 2006). For PBL, balance between process and product is important to make sure focus is on four skills, fluency, and accuracy, throughout the project. In that way, the combination can favor and accelerate the learning of different kinds of learners, the ones who focus on how language forms and those who would incline toward language meaning (Dale & Tanner, 2012). Thus, it can be supportive when students have different levels of proficiency, different learning styles, and ability levels.
In the context of second/foreign language development, «learners need varied opportunities to produce language» (Musumeci, 1996, p. 314). A combination of CLIL and PBL also improves the learners' articulateness, fluency, and accuracy (Yufrizal et al., 2017).
In addition, learners require a friendly environment to receive, produce, cognize, and understand language. Therefore, having two approaches in a symbiosis would mean varied task opportunities to meet language challenges and gain efficacy. In short, a symbiosis in language can mean a deliberate instrumental use to achieve intercultural communicative competence without rejecting the process involved in language acquisition, language learning, and its link to the study of functional forms of the language but the case built is that language is not solely the objective. Both learning approaches have a theoretical framework that supports realistic and purposeful communication.

Cognition
Cognition is understood as a thought process. Therefore, cognition stimulation is a fundamental process that must be   (2000) believed this model led learners to in-depth understanding. Inciting the learner to undertake projects where they undertake planning, collecting data, negotiating, discovering, proposing, and solving reasoning, critical and creative thinking take place. Learning higherlevel cognitive skills within this framework increases students' capability to apply their learning to real-world contexts (Thomas, 2000). Providing meaning and space for thinking and thought processing is fundamentally important for learners to foster cognitive skills (e.g., comprehension, retention, learning how to learn, analysis, application). Solomon (2003) clarified that through teacher guidance, students «gather evidence from a variety of sources and synthesize, analyze and derive knowledge from it» (p. 20). To Coyle et al. (2010), cognition in CLIL is vital to addressing content because it provides the basis for advancement in comprehension and understanding of both language and content. CLIL learners have shown high proficiency levels in interpretation, abstract thinking, concept formulation and awareness, critical thinking, and memorization abilities.
Language and content learning serve as a platform to reinforce the development of higher-order and lower-order skills by using classroom activities that enable learners to reflect, analyze, solve problems and challenges in many daily-life situations. CLIL therefore, is not about the mere transfer of knowledge but the creation of new knowledge (Marsh, 2012, p. 811).  The CLIL approach suggests, as a guide to the teaching, the connection to Bloom's (Bloom et al., 1956) taxonomy of educational objectives or its revised version by Anderson and Krathwohl (2001) for designing and offering effective instructional units intending to achieve the six cognitive actions for knowledge gaining leveled from simple to complex or lower-order to higher-order thinking or concrete to structured cognitive tasks. Through it, learners clarify what to do with the content regarding remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating.
In this regard, Dalton-Puffer (2013) envisioned an alternative schemata of language cognition oriented to a «zone of convergence between content and language pedagogies» (p. 216). The schema was categorized as classifying, defining, describing, evaluating, explaining, exploring, and reporting. The argument around the alternative lies in the notion that cognition is not merely engaged in during communication, both verbal and non-verbal but also when language is used. Indicating that the mental process undergone when constructing the idea intended to be conveyed takes on cognitive effort. In such mental activity of thought and speech process, language conceptualizations occur (Swain & Lapkin, 2013, p. 105). As illustrated, the cognitive processes are both in terms of the language used, as it is to content and knowledge.
By using the constructive practice of raising awareness and forming conceptualizations, CLIL and PBL direct through the various tasks and through projects, respectively.
Through content and project work units, learners undergo various cognitive operations nurturing higher and lower thinking skills.
These functions' interplay can help to outline the content and language activities for a more focused and delimited integration that can activate cognition resorting to variants of sources; for that matter, the language itself, projects, the community, and content and culture study. Although educators can complement it with Bloom's taxonomy to meet a more diverse cognitive activation, CLIL and PBL foster skills essential to the learner's integral development, alluring students in cognitive tasks (Plaza-Vidal, 2020). These skills are significantly required in the further advancement of students' learning and acquisition.

Context
The context in education has been understood as the variables and conditions in which a particular learning process occurs. Considering context is critical in any learning experience as it can be reinforced significantly from the specific conditions outside the educational scope. The field of language education can be highly supported and nurtured from context (Krashen, 1985), since context operates through language (Lier, 1996). Considering this reference, CLIL-based units claim to portray a recognized connection between learning and context to accommodate learners with a pertinent and realistic anchor which interrelates content and language learning by means of meaningful and natural interactions.
Similarly, the students' context is a fundamental factor from which students are expected to become active participants in their immediate reality. In PBL, learners are explicitly encouraged to identify, propose, solve, or approach specific context-related issues, concerns, or problems. The evidence available suggests that PBL is an instructional model that generates connections between context and learning experience.
For PBL helps to promote meaningful learning environments through student-centered and challenging questions while developing multiple and alternative perspectives around a task, problem, or challenge linked to the real world. Aside from the opportunity to develop their language skills, students engage in practical communication scenarios to fulfill the need for authenticity and meaningful tasks with real purpose and benefits (Simpson 2011;Levine 2004).
In the case of a foreign language, the target language can be used due to contextualized contact or by observing the community. Consequently, learners' roles are reconstructed by having students become managers of their learning process, which needs to be previously designed and planned by the educator to acknowledge learners' drives, questions, requirements, and interests so that these are adequately addressed and considered. Context is highly pondered in the PBL model because it implicates learners in projects outside the classroom where they can authentically explore connections, interactions, and phenomena from real-life situations to concretely enrich the learning experience in the classroom. . Theoretical Proposal: Exploring the symbiosis of CLIL and PBL to foster an intercultural learning experience in EFL. DEDiCA. REVISTA DE EDUCAÇÃO E HUMANIDADES, N.º 19, 2021, 267-288 According to Railsback (2002), PBL is favorable to having students to contribute to their community fulfilling a sense of collective purpose. PBL, and CLIL, connect to Service-learning. Astin et al. (2000, p. 4-5) found that «Service participation shows significant positive effects on all 11 outcome measures: academic performance (GPA, writing skills, critical thinking skills), values (commitment to activism and to promoting racial understanding), selfefficacy, leadership (leadership activities, selfrated leadership ability, interpersonal skills) (…). The single most important factor associated with a positive service-learning experience appears to be the student's degree of interest in the subject matter. Subject-matter interest is an especially important determinant of the extent to which (a) the service experience enhances understanding of the "academic" course material, and (b) the service is viewed as a learning experience».
PBL, and CLIL use a model that resembles real-world dynamics offering authenticity and meaningfulness leading to experiential and deeper learning.
Therefore, the symbiosis here can be built by having CLILbased units supplementing classroom dynamism when addressing context-like projects, maximizing the role adjured to context. CLIL students are trained for internationalization with a curriculum driven by building skills to face real-life requirements and challenges (Cummins, 2000). This kind of real-world relevance in questions, tasks, and challenges enables practical knowledge (Klimova, 2012).
Project activities that resemble that objective can be designed. In CLIL, thinking skills like analyzing, reflecting, and evaluating abstract solutions to specific issues resemble content and context (Coyle et al., 2010). Real experience integrated into the curriculum allows teachers to calibrate appropriate levels of complexity for effective student involvement.
CLIL and PBL integration can be advantageous if explicit genuine tasks take students outside into the community to experiment and put into practice knowledge, language, and skills such as collaboration, project planning, decision making, and problem-solving, while fostering social skills required to interrelate in real-life situations. The experience serves to build communities of practice between all the participants of the learning process and the  community members (Wenger, 1998). CLIL and PBL stimulate meaning from different sources. The symbiosis may upgrade the pragmatic idea of training to adopt lifelong learning skills and competitive skills for the 21st century for the present and the future requirements such as teamwork, problem-solving, creative, and critical thinking, research, time management, information synthesizing, and digital literacy. CLIL and PBL in combination may better prepare students not only for future employment in the context of globalization and the changing global and local scenarios but, most importantly, to educate learners to become active citizens who articulate issues that require attention and action in their context or community in terms of doing the most possible good.

Culture
The language-driven approaches are clear to construe the need to address the cultural component in language education for many decades now. CLIL is not different in this sense and places as a fundamental dimension the C component of culture. The debate, though, hinges on what, how, and why we should do it. The culture domain has been found to be problematic and complex. The path for exploring this dimension must be first informed as a lifelong learning process. Byram has clarified that aside from presenting facts, information, or approximations toward cultures, an emphasis should be driven to a method that prepares learners for encounters with foreign cultural practices, beliefs, and social identities. Such complexity requires learners to undertake analysis, reflection, and a comparative approach (Byram, 1997, p. 20).
Incorporating culture needs to be done regularly using the intercultural notion linked to the language to explore possibilities to adapt the curriculum explicitly and implicitly to the demands and axioms of this critical component for learners to be able to enhance communication efficacy in a framework of intermingling cultures. The prescribed culture connection to CLIL through themes contributes to a certain extent to address the emergent questions of what, how, and why of its integration. The stated cultural dimension in CLIL constitutes a pilar that is still in need of reinforcement for both explicit and implicit teaching.  Teacher will ask the students to observe a cartoon related to achievement and share their observations. Task # 2 & 3: Two quotes will be shared by the teacher, students are expected to react to the quotes. For example: A dream becomes a goal when action is taken toward its achievement. Bo Bennett After that, students will provide and construct their own definition of 'achievement'. Reading and writing

Individual & Group Work
Multimedia and Handouts CORE PART: Task # 4: Students will read the biography of Bill Gates and label paragraphs with correct titles from a given list. They will then look for definitions of some words from the biography passage. Then, they will fill some factual blanks about Bill Gates by using verbs in the past tense. They will also read a passage about Keylor Navas. A Costa Rican soccer player. Task # 5: Sentence structures of Simple Present and Cubero . Theoretical Proposal: Exploring the symbiosis of CLIL and PBL to foster an intercultural learning experience in EFL. DEDiCA. REVISTA DE EDUCAÇÃO E HUMANIDADES, N.º 19, 2021, 267-288 Simple past are addressed and discussed in class to meet the language demands of the activities. Task # 6 Students will read and evaluate critically with their partners the two short biographies to ascertain ideas related to achievement and success. After that, they will, in the same way, evaluate their own achievements in the context of their culture and country, while thinking and providing ideas of strategies that can help them in achieving their goals in life. Task # 7: Students will read and discuss a comparative analysis of cultures provided by Hofstede with respect to achievements, i.e., individualism and collectivism, with some examples. Task # 8: In a plenary session, the teacher guides the students reflect about the necessary steps and strategies to achieve goals. Finally, students share characteristics of highly successful people and how they can set their goals to progressively achieve them. Listening and speaking

Whole class
Video song The class is concluded by listening to the song "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield. Students are invited to provide final insights around the song and its cultural elements.
Assessment: Journal writing: Students will write a journal entry reflection about differences in terms of collectivistic and individualistic cultures and how each culture handles the idea of achievement. They will also provide their general insights about the task activities and what they have discovered in terms of content and culture. Project: In groups, students record an online mini drama video (via Zoom app) based on a short story that reflects or touches the idea of achievement and success. Students will then post/share their video drama on the classroom app for the whole class to watch the video and provide feedback on their performance and content ideas reflected.
Cubero  context where students relate to the process and practical and authentic opportunities can be supported. The combination of CLIL and PBL may increase the chances for those kinds of opportunities to emerge. For instance, PBL learning exhibits by default contact to the community; therefore, both explicit and implicit culture introduction can occur resorting to contextualized material or by using digital culture-rich sources related to community-based input (Beckett & Slater, 2005;Stoller, 2006). Thus, students do not only need to learn how to address crucial issues in the foreign language, but they also need the strategies to face the number of challenges that may raise in a typical or non-typical conversation, even with members of the same culture. Learners need to know how hidden cultural codes operate to adopt tools to adequately address those.
In that sense, CLIL is explicitly advocating for addressing cultural differences in a possibly multicultural classroom taking advantage of those human sources for learning. It is part of its learning goal to examine, present, and use language and cultural material to boost students' awareness. It takes advantage of varied content themes and topics to visit and revisit cultural perspectives, data standpoints, and life approaches through task-based class activities to explore the linguistic and non-linguistic constructs of the other and the self, seeking rapport for effective communication where learners can use strategies to readjust cultural knowledge, skills, attitudes, and awareness. According to Cubero-Vásquez (2019), in foreign language contexts, students can benefit from comprehensive knowledge concerning target culture and foreign culture examinations through varied contextualized resources and material carefully selected by the teacher intended to aid students to gain a sense of their surrounding world. To Mikulec and Miller (2011), projects implemented are plausible to stimulate communication in many ways, conversing and exchanging information to activate students' ideas, opinions, and knowledge of various topics including culture.
Therefore, a combination of PBL and CLIL can effectively be employed to foster cultural proficiency through the task-based cultural content complemented by the model of projects. It would suggest a comprehensive mediation with authentic projects and . Theoretical Proposal: Exploring the symbiosis of CLIL and PBL to foster an intercultural learning experience in EFL. DEDiCA. REVISTA DE EDUCAÇÃO E HUMANIDADES, N.º 19, 2021, 267-288 tasks that entitle learners through autonomous research, stages, product, and socialization of intercultural-related projects. Since PBL promotes community-based experience (Beckett & Slater, 2005;Stoller, 2006), the target culture (e.g., history, practices, stories, norms, values, symbols) can find a place to be rediscovered and perceived. CLIL and PBL may amplify intercultural communicative competence and complementarily establish the language and culture connections for expected positive outcomes in communication, understanding, empathy, and respect toward other people's way of life. PBL and CLIL in symbiosis can empower learners to recognize the relationship between foreign languages and culture by examining their community. The path for exploring this dimension must be first informed as a lifelong learning process. As Byram stated, a flexible method that prepares learners for international, intercultural interactions is equally important (Byram, 1997). CLIL and PBL in a merged scenario seem to offer enough collaborative opportunities for learners to construct knowledge, reinforce social relationships, cooperate within the community, and acquire the target language in natural-like manners. At the same time, this combination provides space for autonomous learning where learners assume responsibilities over their learning. Meaningful interactions incite students' autonomy among themselves and even with the community. This results in the development of habits and the adoption of strategies for lifelong learning. In PBL, students are autonomous, self-directing their learning goals. This PBL feature can be further reprocessed for a CLIL-like lesson to reproduce the students' positive attitudes of motivation. Actually, it has been proved that students enjoying a CLIL experience are significantly more enthusiastic (Lasagabaster, 2011) empowered, and confident after achieving and completing their research, progress, and product. Since projects are connected to students' interests, drives, and needs, they dramatically amplify learners' selfconfidence, enjoyment, intrinsic motivation (Dörnyei, 1994), and positive reinforcement. Consequently, the combined CLIL and PBL enhance effective and varied techniques to provide nontraditional assessment and feedback from educators and peers. CLIL and PBL criteria provide a dynamic, engaging learning experience in the context of language acquisition and learning that can be connected . Theoretical Proposal: Exploring the symbiosis of CLIL and PBL to foster an intercultural learning experience in EFL. DEDiCA. REVISTA DE EDUCAÇÃO E HUMANIDADES, N.º 19, 2021, 267-288 implicitly and explicitly through a direct teaching style seeking learning efficiency in a triad of components: language, content, and the intercultural component. Language educators might use virtually any topic supported based on a comprehensive model to introduce and instruct language, content, and intercultural issues via a combined approach of CLIL and PBL principles.