With any manual transmission you should engage the clutch completely to do anything. My Alero and cruze both require you to, however the alero being 15 years old and 231,000 miles is much more forgiving. On Gen1 cruze the clutch pedal is linked to a rheostat (pot) that sends a variable voltage to the computer for the electronic side of things. You could measure the resistance and rig something up for that if you wanted. As for the mechanical side of things, completely pressing the clutch pedal will be much, much better for it.