María Basterrechea

2. Language-related episodes during collaborative tasks: A comparison of CLIL and EFL learners

Recent research in different educational settings has provided support for the use of collaborative tasks in which learners consciously reflect on their own language (i.e., produce language-related episodes or LREs). However, little is known about whether learners in content-and-language-integrated-learning (CLIL) programs pay attention to formal aspects of language and whether that has an impact on their written production. This study investigates the effect of collaborative work on production of the present tense marker –s by eighty-one English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) and CLIL adolescent learners during a dictogloss task. Results showed that CLIL learners produced more LREs than EFL learners and that there was a positive correlation between the number of LREs involving the target form and the learners’ written text reconstructions.

CLIL and SLA: Insights from an interactionist perspective

The Interaction Hypothesis is one of the explanations for second language acquisition (SLA) (Hatch 1978; Long 1983). Numerous studies have shown that interaction facilitates SLA because learners have the opportunity to negotiate language input, receive feedback and modify their output (Long 1996; Pica 2013). However, there is little experimental research on interaction from this perspective in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) settings. The main goal of this chapter is to provide an overview of the main constructs of the interactionist framework and to see how they have been researched in studies that analyze the interlanguage of CLIL learners regarding their negotiation routines, attention to form and corrective feedback episodes.

On self-reported use of communication strategies by CLIL learners in primary education:

The use of communication strategies (CSs) in oral and written second language (L2) production has been widely investigated (e.g. Muñoz, 2007). As for content and language integrated learning (CLIL) settings, learners seem to resort to the first language (L1) less often than in traditional foreign language instruction (e.g. Celaya & Ruiz de Zarobe, 2010). However, few studies have examined what L2 learners say about their use of CSs by means of questionnaires – e.g. Ehrman & Oxford (1990), with adult English as a foreign language (EFL) learners – and little is known about the reported use of CSs by young learners (Purdie & Oliver, 1999), and much less by young CLIL learners. This study examines learners’ self-reported opinions about the use of CSs (guessing, miming, morphological creativity, dictionary, predicting, paraphrasing, borrowing, calque, foreignizing, avoidance and appeal for assistance). An adapted survey (Kellerman, Bongaerts, & Poulisse, 1987; Oxford, 1989; O’Malley & Chamot, 1990; Yule & Tarone, 1990) was administered to CLIL learners of English in grades 5 and 6 of primary education. Quantitative differences in terms of the type of strategies used were explored. Analyses showed striking similarities between grades 5 and 6 as well as significant differences in the use of the different CSs, paraphrasing and appeal for assistance being the most frequent strategies, whereas morphological creativity and miming obtained the lowest frequency. Findings are discussed in the light of learners’ age and the nature of CLIL instruction.