Published papers

South Tyrol is one of the special Italian autonomous provinces where Ladin-speaking (4%), German-speaking (63%) and Italian-speaking (23%) people cohabit and all of these three languages are officially recognized by law. This region had belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and was annexed to Italy after WWI. During Mussolini’s regime, Italianization took place all over the territory and the use of German in public education was prohibited. After WWII, in order to guarantee the right to receive education in their mother tongue, each language group created a separate school system from kindergarten to high school, but learning each other’s language as a second language was also made mandatory in all school levels. Being plurilingual is a key to success in this region, so in an attempt to improve second language acquisition, the Italian schools decided to introduce the CLIL on an experimental basis in the 1990s and, more recently, so did the German schools. Because of this socio-historical background, introducing the CLIL method into public education has become a sensitive issue. German speaking right wing politicians claimed that it could violate the principle of receiving education in their mother tongue. In this paper, we will discuss how “CLIL” is introduced to both school systems , how it is perceived by both Italian and German speaking inhabitants and what other controversial issues are raised by analyzing articles from local online media and discussions at the local parliament.