Can CLIL give Italian high school students in the private sector a greater opportunity to develop their EFL speaking skills?

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) can lead Italian high school students to improve their English as a Foreign Language speaking skills. The trigger for this research comes from my EFL teaching experiences at Italian schools, where the syllabi employed tend to neglect the training of speaking skills and focus mainly on grammar translation and English literature instructions. The stimulus for this investigation comes also from articles on the effectiveness of using CLIL for the improvement of FL speaking performance and Lexis extension that I read before writing this article in order to have a broader view of this topic. The literature review describes in detail theoretical issues with regard to the advantages of using CLIL methodology in the classroom over traditional approaches and how this technique helps FL students to facilitate speaking difficulties. It also makes reference to a few key findings from previous research. This study was conducted in Italy, and the data gathering processes consist mainly of qualitative, semi-structured interviews with five participants (three EFL learners and two experienced teachers of English as a foreign language), interview transcripts, and content analysis techniques that I used to examine and interpret the collected data. Findings indicate that not only can content and language integrated learning represent an improvement of the common EFL teaching methods and help learners enhance their speaking abilities, but it can also stimulate their motivation to study English and lower learners’ levels of anxiety, which is commonly associated with their concern about making mistakes or being assessed.