Content Teachers’ Written Comments on Their Life-long English Language Profiles

Abstract

CLIL in Italy has been compulsory by law since 2003 (Moratti’s Law) for the last year of all secondary schools. Subject-matter teachers were chosen to be the CLIL teachers, and only in 2012 did methodological and linguistic training begin (provided by universities all over the country). This study explores the profile of content teachers attending CLIL training not in terms of their linguistic competence but in terms of their relationship with English as an additional language. To do so, 115 trainees were asked to fill in a questionnaire composed of 10 open-ended questions and 2 close-ended ones. This questionnaire had both a research and training goal, since it was submitted at the beginning of the training course to investigate content teachers’ perceived linguistic profiles, which served as a psychological and pedagogical starting point for the course. Results show that content teachers have a specific linguistic identity and have had similar past experiences with the English language. These results could have repercussions and be exported to other training programmes, especially in terms of shifting teachers’ personae from subject-matter to fully-fledged CLIL teachers.