The Backbone project proposes a pedagogically motivated corpus approach enablingteachers to collect and exploit spoken discourse resources for teaching LWULTlanguages and their regional varieties. Based on the communicative principles of learnerand teacher autonomy, authenticated learning and collaboration, the Backboneapproach combines corpus resources for linguistically and thematically specialised CLILpurposes with e-learning-enhanced language practice and communicative interaction inblended language learning courses.Based on the Minerva project SACODEYL, Backbone will develop pedagogic corpustools including distributed XML file management, multi-tier annotation, pedagogicenrichment and a web-based pedagogic search interface. 7 corpora of interviews,presentations and conversations representing LWULT languages and varieties will becompiled: Polish and Turkish, regional & socio-cultural varieties of German, French,Spanish and English as well as European varieties of English as a lingua franca.Themes and subjects will be determined through a needs analysis of language teachingsettings in secondary, higher and vocational education. The corpora will bepedagogically enriched with learning materials and piloted in 24 language courses ofdifferent CLIL orientation.To ensure validation, a final European dissemination workshop will be combined with anonline exploitation service and exploitation events in 6 countries.