Background to the CONBAT project
This website results from a project run within the ECML's (European Centre for Modern Languages) Empowering Language Professionals programme entitled "Content based teaching and plurilingual/cultural awareness".
Abstract of the project
The project acronym ConBaT+ means that content-based teaching needs to be complemented with activities enhancing plurilingualism and pluriculturalism. Developments in second and foreign language teaching aiming to use languages to teach other content subject areas need to take such concepts into account, if Europe is to succeed in creating a 'language culture' (Candelier et al 2004, p.20). The aim of the "ConBaT+ " project is to produce materials in three languages, English, French and Spanish, to teach other subjects at primary and secondary level.
Educational institutions also face the challenge of plurilingualism and pluriculturalism in their classrooms; for that reason, the materials developed in this project will contain activities aimed to raise awareness of plurilingualism and pluriculturalism in order to foster positive attitudes toward languages, their speakers and their cultures.
Awareness of plurilingualism and pluriculturalism is the major aim of the project: how can this aim be achieved? First, by using an L2 to teach any subject in the curriculum, and second, by offering the pupils whose L1 is a minority language the opportunity to use it for specific activities. At the same time, those pupils might contribute to enrich any topic presented in the subject in question, by comparing the way in which the same topic is viewed in his/her country of origin.
ConBaT+ will strongly contribute to language education practice and the project will grow out of the large networking opportunities offered by the ECML through the development of rich, varied and useful materials as well as through the dissemination of its vision.