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.
