Innovation in Language Learning

The language training of the CLIL teacher has become an important area of research and study in the last years: how has it to be carried out? For how long? With what specific objectives? And how has it to be combined with CLIL methodology?

All these questions have found some answers in the language courses organized by universities and schools inside the measures and regulations advocated by the Italian Ministry of Education in order to promote CLIL teaching in the Licei and secondary schools, and foster CLIL teachers’ professional development.   

In this paper I would like to present two experiences of teaching English as a second language to subject teachers (maths, physics, science, history, philosophy, economy, law, chemistry, art, etc.) in a couple of linguistic courses organized by CAFRE – University of Pisa in Florence (Liceo “Machiavelli”) and Prato (Liceo “Copernico”) in the school year 2014 -15.

The first aspect to point out is the typology of learners (subject teachers aged from 40 to 60) who were spurred by great motivation to teach CLIL, had had different approaches to the study of a foreign language and needed to improve language competences in order to reach level B2 and after that C1. This needs analysis induced me – together with a team of language trainers involved in similar courses - to make adequate choices in terms of objectives, syllabus and timetable. In particular, I decided to follow two guidelines for the courses: narration and a content-based approach:

1.     in the former case narration was meant as free expression of oneself, as consciousness of one’s own language skills and knowledge, as motivation to personal empowerment and as reflection on one’s own history, a personal narration inside the social one;

2.     in the latter case topics were chosen for adult learners (e.g. gender differences, science and technology, Global English, the rhetoric of politics, etc.) and dealt with at a higher level of analysis and discussion through activities of critical thinking and of problem solving.

In the light of these two perspectives my intent was also to make subject teachers approach CLIL methodology and “feel and perceive” English as a dynamic living language, in which meaning prevails on form, communication on grammar.

The participants in the courses responded to the work – either in presence or online – with great enthusiasm, but also with a deep awareness of the challenges and difficulties they were going to meet as CLIL teachers. I have recorded their “voice” through spoken and written tasks that are marked by a dominant metacognitive feature (observation and reflection). And this is the third fil rouge crossing both learning paths, and leading to projects of personal training and to the development of a different professional profile.