1. CLIL in Italy
Situations of vehicular use of a foreign or second language are not new in Italy.
In schools in Val d'Aosta, the promotion of bilingualism (Italian and French) through the school
system is the result of the special statute of 1948, Article 38, which establishes equal rights
and equal status to both languages (French and Italian).
This educational intervention was designed to promote competence in the language (and
culture) of the neighbouring country (France).
The development of CLIL teaching in Italy was also encouraged by the law on education
(Decree 3 September 2002, Art.4, Section 3).
Then there have been the experiences of ministerial projects in progress since the beginning of
the early '90s, such as the European High School and the European Languages High School.
Other important steps towards the CLIL teaching in Italy have been done thanks to The
Ministerial Project " Languages 2000 " and the decree of 17/10/05, implementing the Law
53/03, concerning the introduction of the second cycle of secondary school.
This decree states that in the 5th year of all the high schools, teaching of a non linguistic
subject will be compulsory.
The ongoing experiences of CLIL teaching are especially at school, where there are many cases
of schools connected in networks to form centres of research and permanent training, in
Lombardy (project ALI-CLIL: 1999), in Friuli Venezia Giulia (Network- CLIL: 2000), in Veneto
with the 'University of Venice ("I learn in Language 2": 2002), in Piedmont ("Language, culture
and science: Language Integrated Learning and scientific content": 2002), Trentino Alto Adige
with IPRASE and the University of Trento and Venice ("LI.VE-languages used: 2002) and Emilia
Romagna.
The involved universities that are collaborating in these projects especially provide scientific
guidance or they and form CLIL teachers, as in the case of CLIL Laboratory of the University
of Venice and the post-graduate course in Teaching of modern languages of the University
"Carlo Bo" in Urbino.