First Steps in CLIL: Training the Teachers

As David Graddol's "World English Project" gains momentum (Graddol, 2006), CLIL is increasingly being taken up by Ministries of Education as an innovative approach to teaching modern languages, as a motivating method for teaching subject areas, or simply as a contribution to internationalisation and the ideal of multilingualism. With this exponential growth, the lack of competent, trained CLIL teachers has become more evident. Content teachers are not infrequently monolingual and may not recognize the benefits of becoming bilingual, while language teachers may not feel proficient in the subject-area knowledge required for content teaching. Education ministries insist on CLIL implementation, but do not oversee a workforce sufficiently competent in all three necessary areas: target language ability, subject knowledge, and CLIL methodology. This paper explores the need to design quality training modules at ITT (Initial Teacher Training) colleges, for PGCSE (Postgraduate Certificate in Education) courses at universities, and INSET (In-Service Education and Training) courses so that teachers to feel confident in embarking on CLIL courses at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels.