Preparing teachers in Italy for CLIL: reflections on assessment, language proficiency and willingness to communicate

The purpose of this study is to open a window onto Italian Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) teachers’ language competence and the ways it is being assessed by presenting a specific case: one testing session of the first batch of future CLIL teachers aimed at assessing their level of competence in a foreign language, in which the authors were personally involved as decision makers, organisers and observers. To provide an insight into the issue, this paper first contextualises Italian CLIL teacher training within policy recommendations provided by the European Union and the Italian Ministry of Education. Secondly, it describes in detail the specific decision-making process related to the evaluation of aspiring CLIL teachers in Southern Italy in the vehicular language, to explore suggestions for and issues related to such evaluation. Finally, it presents the outcomes of this evaluation, drawing on survey and observational data, to uncover the descriptive characteristics of the individuals involved in the analysis, the extent to which they displayed willingness to communicate in the vehicular language of instruction and differences that emerged in perceived and actual proficiency, and across subgroups. The different perspectives of policy, test development and test outcomes inform suggestions for training of CLIL teachers in the Italian context and beyond.