TEACHING MUSIC IN ENGLISH a CLIL experiment and a curriculum review for the scuola secondaria di primo grado

Abstract

In this work I want to explore the potential of the music class in the scuola media as a tool for the improvement of the use of English (L2) as vehicular language. Music and language are strongly related systems of communication, that can be trained simultaneously. They both have sounds, they use symbols and they share cultural and emotional implications. Music is recognized as a pre-verbal code, that prepares the ear of the infant for the perception of sounds that will later become language sounds. Moreover music is part of teenagers' life and for this reason it is percieved less strict then the others school subjects. It is therefore important to take advantage of the two hours of Music, that are compulsory in the scuola media, to develop not only musical skills, but also language skills. In this sense music class becomes a ductile subject with a manifold potential and the syllabus should be organized from this perspective. Not only L2 can be improved, but also L3, in my case German. In the first part of this thesis I will analize the correlation between music and language from a theoretical point of view. Than I will explane the meaning og CLIL and its possible application in the scuola media. It will follow an experiment held in a local school: a CLIL project made of 8 music lessons in English and part of one lesson in German