Innovation in Language Learning

This teaching project, based on the Integrated Content and Language Learning methodology (in Italian known as CLIL) and applied to teaching Philosophy in Italian senior-secondary schools, was developed and carried out at the “T. Lucrezio Caro” lyceum, a Roman grammar school. Our project is grounded in ongoing research conducted by the Doctoral School of the Educational Sciences Department of the RomaTre University, and focuses on the Cafés Philosophiques, a dedicated observatory monitoring tutorial activities and integrated planning in real-life multiethnic didactic milieus.

Cafés Philosophiques, with its CLIL methodology, maybe considered an extracurricular activity, though it might be officially recognized and included in participant-students’ portfolios.

Our goal is to find new shared, multilinguistic lexicographic standards to apply to Philosophy as a curricular subject, to be double-checked according to the exegesis of terminological shifts and the hermeneutics of ideas while linking them to teaching practice.

To achieve this goal, other goals have been included: the enhancement of students’ communicative performances, of their conversational skills and their ability to express ideas and opinions in a foreign language (L2).

The CLIL Cafés Philosophiques project provides the opportunity of bringing students together in a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic context and inviting them to express themselves on crucial philosophical themes of the western and eastern traditions, in comfortable surroundings. The themes treated may be both “ordinary” and “extraordinary” and range from death, to nature-nurture, decision-making, evidence-based judgement, doubt, the meaning of life, conscience, freedom, marriage, learning, taking risks, use and abuse of language and words, technology, the Zeitgeist, creativity,  somnambulism, true friendship, miracles, laughter, sadness etc.

In short, this experimental project aims at promoting  a  knowledge and an understanding of the History of Philosophy, while promoting students’ ability to converse in different languages (linguistic codes) in an intercultural, school-related (functional multilingualism) milieu.