Throughout the manual, we have found it necessary to refer to the language that is usually used in the school/classroom, and the language being targeted in the CLIL Lesson.
In the last 10 years, Europe has broken down its borders and has added many more member states. Mobility and trans-border migration is now commonplace. In addition, influxes of refugees and immigrants have resulted in the typical European classroom
being a multi-national environment consisting of students with plurilingual abilities. Traditionally, linguists and language teachers used to refer to the native or mother language as being L1, and any foreign language studied as being L2. In the wake of EU
mobilities and immigration, these terms are becoming obsolete. Referring to the language spoken in the host country as native or mother language ignores any migrants, ethnic minorities or nationalists and their own mother tongues. Consider, for example, the case of an Ethiopian in Rome, a Bosnian in Malta, a Turk in Germany, or a homebred Catalan in Barcelona, a Welshman in Wales, or a Scotsman or
Irishman speaking their own version of Gaelic. sing the term L1 ignores their heritage language or even perhaps their first language. And what about bilingual learners, as found in Malta or parts of Switzerland? The targeted language could even be an official
language in their country .
To compound difficulties, the use of English as a global language has resulted in many countries teaching English as part of the curriculum . English has now become mandatory in most European countries, and is therefore not always considered a ‘foreign language’,
but a second language . After careful thought, we have decided to dispatch the terms L1 (for mother tongue/
native language) and L2 (foreign language), and throughout the manual we will use the following terms:
For the language that is typically and usually used in the classroom, the ‘norm’ so to speak, we will use the term School Lingua Franca (SLF) as the language in which the class learns, operates and communicates . For the language which is being targeted to learn together with content, we will use the term Targeted Language (TL) or Additional Language (AL). These terms will be used
synonymously .
