Innovation in Language Learning

 Language teaching policy has featured prominently in the EU community ever since, but it was not until the 1990s that European institutions realized the need of exploring innovative teaching methods. The most advocated one in the last two decades has been the CLIL methodological approach, a language immersion program which seeks the learning of content and the simultaneous learning of a foreign language. Following this European policy, the Autonomous Community of Canarias through its Bureau of Education has fostered language programs since 2004, among which CLIL stands out, with the specific objective of enhancing second language learning. Since then, an array of resources has been provided by this Bureau for primary and secondary CLIL provision schemes, including on-site CLIL courses, language courses or a website. After ten years of implementation in the Canary Islands, a question arises: what motivates teachers to get involved in CLIL programs and what are their views on CLIL? In order to answer these questions we have asked those teachers and would-be teachers who enrolled in a CLIL course at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria during the years 2012, 2013 and 2014, in total 86 students. The course consists of an online training of 60 hours and it is not only aimed at teachers of content subjects, who had at least a B1 level in English, but also at primary and secondary teachers of English. This survey has yielded a rich pool of comments that we have analysed to shed some light into teachers’ perspectives as regards CLIL. For example, although CLIL program was implemented in the Canary Islands 10 years ago, 55% of the online CLIL course participants do not know much about the program, but do wish to learn as they consider it a new and fresh way of teaching languages; and those participants who had participated in CLIL programs shared their opinion about positive and negative aspects they had experienced. Notwithstanding their background, most of them stress the fact that English is the language of present and future and that bilingual education is essential in this globalized world.