Il CLA del Foro Italico e la formazione metodologica CLIL

Since 2013 the Language Centre of the University Foro Italico has promoted the CLIL project aiming to run Content and Language Integrated Learning courses for secondary-school teachers (Lazio). The CLIL project is coordinated by the language center in agreement with Ufficio Scolastico Regionale USR and the Ministry of Education MIUR. Such initiative gave the opportunity to open the language center to the local community and to use its research and teaching knowledge to meet societal needs and fulfil the university’s “third mission”. The aim of this paper is to show the experience of CLIL teacher training courses focusing on the crucial aspects of plurilingualism, interculturality, creativity and internationalization. The strengths of CLIL methodology has been highlighted as well as the emerging profile of Italian CLIL teachers. Finally, the outcomes encouraged an innovative teaching method and helped CLIL teachers to adopt a student-centered teaching style. Obviously, the transition to the new style implies a lot of extra time to get used to this completely different approach.