Our organization called CPIA “Guglielminetti” is located in Asti, a small city in the North-West of Italy. CPIA is the acronym of Provincial Centre for Adult Education, our organization offers: Italian language courses for foreigners, courses to obtain the first level Secondary School Diploma, short and modular literacy courses (IT, foreign languages) and courses for the linguistic and social integration of migrants.

CPIAs are state schools set up by the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research and people can enroll in our courses only if older than sixteen.

CPIA completed the project ERASMUS+ "BABELE" KA1, for staff mobility; 20 staff units had a learning experience in the UK or France, participating in structured courses, including those for the CLIL methodology.

CLIL stands for Content and Language Integrated Learning and is a dual-focused educational approach in which an additional language is used for teaching and learning a topic: the focus is not only on content, and not only on language; each is interwoven even if the emphasis is greater on one or the other at given time. Using CLIL students learn something new about the subject and at the same time improve the foreign language.

CLIL may be content driven (the focus is the subject) or language driven (the focus is the language): both are perfectly valid and not at all mutually exclusive.

CLIL is not a new form of language education, it is not a new form of subject education. It is an innovative fusion of both: teaching a subject using another language.

Students should have a basic knowledge of the foreign language and have a supporting language lesson.

The foreign language teacher of and the subject teacher mutually collaborate to prepare the lessons and activities. The teachers need to adapt lessons to create suitable tasks for the students’ level, in order to allow students to learn the subject in the foreign language.

Each activity provides further “scaffolding” for the original task. The activity must be designed in a way to support the student to meet the lesson objective.  It is very important that the teachers change their methodology in order to encourage communication.

The general structure of CLIL lesson must be:

• CONCEPTS: the content you will teach.
• PROCEDURES: the language skills used to teach the concepts (speaking, writing, reading, listening, critical thinking).
• LANGUAGE: the grammar and vocabulary used in the lesson

In our classes it is usual to have students with mixed skills, so CLIL must be adapted to the students. In order to do this it is necessary to consider this points:

• TASK: different tasks for different ability or worksheet which gets progressively harder.
• GROUPING: organize small mixed-ability groups.
• RESOURCES: use a wide spectrum of materials to achieve a single learning outcome.
• PACE: use time flexibly to meet all students’ needs.
• OUTCOME: a variety of results is expected and acceptable.
• DIALOGUE AND SUPPORT: clear instructions, pre-teaching vocabulary, detailed explanations, targeted questioning, eliciting, comprehension check questions, verbal encouragement.
• ASSESSMENT: on-going assessment (not a big exam).

Different strategies must be used:

• READING STRATEGIES: Damaged test, True or False game, Order the text, Read a text and find mistakes in the corresponding illustration, Put the cut up paragraphs in order, Draw a diagram to represent the text.
• READING STRATEGIES: Reading and Role Play, Comparison task, Find synonyms in the text, Reinsert removed sentences from the text, Match adjectives to corresponding nouns, Match topic sentences with paragraphs from a text, Put a list of events in the correct order
• SPEAKING STRATEGIES: Talking walls, Discuss in pairs about a picture, Discuss a text, Debate in a role play.
• WRITING STRATEGIES: Terminology review, Write words related to one topic, Take notes, Composition (narrative or essay, Summary of a text, Complete a composition, Writing based on the rubric)

Games are also a useful resource for example: Place a bet, Hangman, Taboo, Guess who, Crosswords, Lego, Blinded Instructions, Songs, Phone apps.

This type of approach has a very important advantage: the learning of a foreign language through the study of a school subject is motivating because it involves an enrichment of the specific vocabulary.