Introducing Secondary Professional/Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) Student Teachers in Modern Languages to Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)

The revised Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) Key Stage 3 National Curriculum was launched in 2008. It encourages the “use of the target language in connection with
topics and issues that are engaging and may be related to other areas of the curriculum” (National Curriculum, 2008).
In order to account for these national developments, the Initial Teacher Training Programme for Modern Languages was reviewed in 2008 and a bid to take part in the Integrated Learning Network Project funded by the TDA was submitted
successfully in September 2008. The rationale for the project was twofold. Firstly, it was to attempt to adopt a CLIL approach to language teaching and secondly was to give all the Secondary PGCE student teachers in Modern Languages the opportunity to experiment with the CLIL methodology. CLIL is increasingly being recognised as good practice in schools and it is perceived as motivational. Therefore, it may have an impact on student teachers’attitudes towards Modern Languages pedagogy and it may inform their practice as newly qualified teachers.