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.