We feel that teaching should contribute to the learners’ growth as human be- ings and as citizens. Therefore, we reflected on our practices and adapted them to the needs we identified in the class with 27 tenth graders. We wondered how we could foster the sense of citizenship through the use of English as a foreign language (EFL). In this sense, we chose rights as the content knowledge and listening as the FL component. This article, which outlines the character- istics, connotations and results of an action research study which aimed at understanding the 10th graders’ social representations of children’s rights while alsobeing involved inlanguage practices that stressed listening comprehension.

This research study attempted to provide solutions to several needs identi- fied. One concern related to the syllabus, which focused on grammatical as- pects rather than on communicative competencies. We decided to relate the syllabus to the school philosophy in terms of rights education. The pedagogical intervention we made allowed us to identify the learners’ perceptions of the topic of rights as well as their understanding of the language.

Content- Based Instruction — CBI — (Richards and Rodgers, 2014) guided us since it enabled us to emphasise the content of rights towards protection and education whilst fostering listening for general understanding and listening for specific information. In this way, we would transform the classroom into a place to learn and discuss topics that sensitised the class about their roles as citizens committed to social change.

In this line of thinking, this article discusses the problem of identification, the theoretical perspectives, the method and instruments used in the study. Besides, the pedagogical intervention is presented. Finally, there is a depiction of the data analysis procedures, the results and conclusions related to pupils’ perceptions about their entitlements and listening performance.