To nurture a multilingual mind. Foreign language introduction in pre-school. Case study Bambini Bicocca kindergarten.

The European Union has set as one of the European Education Area initiative’s goals the promotion of an inclusive high-quality education. In pursuance of its aims the EU has acknowledged the relevance of the promotion of language learning and the creation of a multilingual community (EU). The importance and challenge of a multilingual mind was observed not only from a bureaucratic point of view, but also and especially from an academic perspective; over the years, more and more researchers (E.g., Volterra e Taeschner, 1978; Genesse, 1989; Romaine, 1995; Guasti, 2007; Atkinson, 2011) have conducted studies on bilingual development at an early age. Nevertheless, the creation of a multilingual and multicultural scenario raises some obstacles; in a country, such as Italy, which, in the last quarter of the 20th century, experienced an accelerated spread of the national language that led from a situation of widespread dialect monolingualism, to extensive bilingualism and in recent years back to a common Italian monolingualism (Berruto, 2021), offering an efficient pedagogical approaches and foreign language teaching methods represents a challenge to overcome. The problem of foreign language teaching grows even more complicated at pre-school age. When working with young children, rather than carrying out a traditional didactic second language teaching and learning method, which may lead to stress associated to the second language, it might be more efficient to nurture a positive attitude towards foreign languages through the implementation of a Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) approach. Ellis (1994), Arnold (1999) and Daloiso (2009) have noted that negative emotions related to the second language acquisition proses might jeopardize the language performance and, therefore, the creation of a multilingual mind. On the other hand, Coyle (2006) claims that a CLIL approach can motivate both language learners and teachers (ivi.), becoming a strategy for exploring different languages and developing metalinguistic aspects in the absence of the possibility of language immersion. In order to see how a CLIL approach may affect second language acquisition in young children a case study, following a qualitative method, has been conducted at the Kindergarten Bambini Bicocca. During a period of time of one year, Italian children, aged between 3 and 6 years, have been exposed to the English language for approximately 5 hours per day. Three language specialists were working with the kids during that period of time. The data was gathered though video and audio recordings, and paper and pencil observations. Subsequently it was processed following a diachronic analysis. By doing so it was possible to monitor not only the evolution of the second language competences but mainly the change in behaviour towards the second language.