Looking at CLIL

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Master degree in Linguistic and Literary Perspectives on the Text – Final assignment LOOKING AT CLIL: TEACHERS’ VIEWS, LEARNERS’ ATTITUDES AND VOCABULARY OUTCOMES Supervised by Rosa María Jiménez Catalán By Mario Arribas García 2009/2010

Transcript of Looking at CLIL

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Master degree in Linguistic and Literary Perspectives on the Text – Final assignment

LL OOOOKK II NNGG AATT CCLL II LL ::

TEACHERS’ VIEWS, LEARNERS’ ATTITUDES AND

VOCABULARY OUTCOMES

Supervised by Rosa María Jiménez Catalán

By Mario Arribas García

2009/2010

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Table of contents

1. Introduction……………………………………………………………..………...…………2

2. Implementation of CLIL in Spain: The case of La Rioja………………..………..…………5

3. Objectives……………………………………………………………………..……………..9

4. Review of the literature………………………………………………………..…………….9

4.1. Working definitions…………………………………………………………..……………9

4.2 Evidence on the effect of CLIL………………………………………………..………….12

4.2.1. Beliefs, motivation and attitudes towards CLIL: empirical evidence………..………...13

4.2.2. Motivation and language achievement………………………………………..………..13

4.2.3. Studies on attitudes towards language learning……………………….……………….13

4.2.4 Views and attitudes related to CLIL…………………………………….……………...15

4.2.5. Studies on the effect of CLIL on learners’ language competence………….………….17

4.3. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………..……………20

5. Research questions……………………………………………………………..…………..21

6. Method………………………………………………………………………….………….22

6.1. Informants…………………………………………………………………….………….22

6.2. Data collection instruments…………………………………………………..…………..25

6.3. Type of research…………………………………………………………..……………...26

6.4. Procedures…………………………………………………………………..……………26

7. Results………………………………………………………………………..…………….27

7.1. Students’ views on CLIL……………………………………………….….……………..27

7.2. Students’ attitudes towards English……………………………………..………………..28

7.3. Students’ vocabulary outcomes…………………………………………..………………29

7.4. Relation between students’ attitudes and vocabulary outcomes……………..…………..31

7.5. Teachers…………………………………………………………………..………………31

7.6. Discussion……………………………………………………………..………………….35

8. Conclusion……………………………………………………………..………………...…39

Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………..…………….41

References………………………………………………………..…………………………...41

Appendixes……………………………………………………………………………………45

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1. Introduction

Nowadays one of the trendiest terms in the European educational scenarios is CLIL, an

acronym for ‘Content and Language Integrated Learning’ that refers to the use of a second or

foreign language as a vehicle to learn the content of a school curricula subject. Yet CLIL is

only a relatively new term, which accounts for an old educational method. Mehisto, Marsh,

and Frigols (2008) remark how some centuries ago Latin was the language used for

instructional purposes at universities. But, as these authors note, the use of Latin was not

CLIL in its purest form, since little attention was paid to vernacular languages, and the will to

integrate vernacular and national languages in the school curricula is regarded as one of the

main innovations of CLIL in comparison to old methodological approaches. Again, this idea is

not new either since, in Canadian and USA schools, CLIL methodology had already been

implemented by means of immersion programs as early as 1960, although under the label of

Content-based language teaching (CBI).

In the last decades CLIL has merged with force due to its attractive tenets but also due to the

international climate enjoyed by Europe at the present time. As to the former, most proponents

of CLIL mention the following (see Coyle et al. 2010, Marsh and Wolff 2007, Mehisto 2008,

Mohan 1986):

• The language is regarded as an instrument to learn the content of a subject in the

school curricula.

• The focus is on content (meaning) rather than on structures, functions or rules of

grammar.

• The language is learnt in a natural way in the classroom setting. There is real purpose:

to acquire subject knowledge “Language ceases to be taught in isolation” (Mohan,

1986: 18); ” …it combines different concepts that have been treated as separate entities

for a long time: CLIL is the point where language learning and subject learning

converge” (Coyle et al., 2010).

• It is learner-centred rather than teacher-centred: “[T]he teacher pulls back from being

the donor of knowledge and becomes the facilitator […]” (Coyle et al., 2010: 6).

Accordingly, CLIL empowers students to acquire knowledge while they develop their

communicative skills at the same time that they activate their cognitive abilities

(Mehisto et al. 2008).

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• It relates learning and language learning to the real world as maths, history or music

are real things for learners: these are part of their lives through the subjects they have

to learn in the school curricula.

• It increases learners’ exposure to the target language in a dramatic way.

• CLIL prepares students for living in a society which is becoming more and more

internationalised, increasingly global and multilingual.

• CLIL also aims to strengthen the respect towards other nationalities by means of

learning other languages and cultures (Eurydice, 2006).

As said above, in the last decade, CLIL has experienced a great expansion in primary and

secondary schools all over Europe. Several are the causes for its rapid spread. Firstly, it is the

need of knowing languages to communicate with other citizens in Europe, a continent in

which monolingual countries and regions are the exception rather than the rule. Secondly, it is

the impact of thousands of immigrants’ coming to Europe; together with their motivation to

find better job opportunities, they also bring their own home languages, which in turn, get in

contact with vernacular languages. Moreover, in order to integrate in the new community,

immigrants and, above all, immigrants’ children, need to learn the language of the community.

This phenomenon has painted the European landscape in a complex but rich multilingual

shade making a natural association with CLIL. Thirdly, there is the urge of improving the

teaching of foreign languages and increasing learners’ competence in foreign languages.

Classroom settings impose great limitations regarding exposure to the language, and CLIL is

regarded as a way to mitigate this limitation. As Sylvén (2010) notes:

“Many people argue that an effective way to achieve competence in another language is

through the CLIL method, because when a language is learned as a separate subject, only

two to three hours per week are devoted to it. By using CLIL, students are exposed to the

target language to a much larger degree, which is vital for linguistic competence to

develop.” (13)

Last but not least, there is the idea of Europe as a union of cultural and educational concerns

depicted by business transactions as well as by educational exchanges of ERASMUS students

among European universities.

In a multilingual Europe the need for understanding others’ languages is a reality, and some

recent initiatives and projects have been created (Eurydice, 2006) in response to this reality.

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They aim at helping European citizens to acquire at least two languages different from their

mother tongues. CLIL is one of these initiatives; within it education is regarded as the natural

scenario where multilingualism can be spread by means of using “a dual-focused educational

approach in which an additional language is used for the learning and teaching of both content

and language” (Mehisto et al. 2008:9).

In 2006 The European Network on Education Systems and Policies published Eurydice, a

report on the development of CLIL across Europe. According to this source, with the

exception of Portugal, Iceland, Greece or Denmark, at present CLIL is found in a great

number of European countries. In most cases a foreign language is learnt together with a

minority language. English, French, and German hold an outstanding position in the ranking

of foreign languages acquired by means of CLIL compared to the less predominant position of

other languages such as Spanish, Italian or Russian. Most countries implement CLIL all along

the compulsory primary and secondary education, few offer CLIL instruction in pre-primary

or kindergarten education.

CLIL in Europe is characterised by a great diversity in its implementation. Experiences differ

among regions within a country but also along schools in a single town. According to

Eurydice’s report, this situation is closely linked to the autonomy given to countries and

schools. However, the diversity of experiences also has to do with the lack of regulation or

official guides regarding its implementation, on particular as far as the following aspects are

concerned: teachers’ language level competence, teachers’ training, language level to be

achieved by learners under a CLIL program, and distribution of number of hours of CLIL

allotted to each grade. For instance, in France, Poland or Hungary prospective CLIL students

are selected on the basis of their performance on entrance exams both on the target language

and on subject knowledge. In contrast, in Spain, Germany, Finland or Sweden, CLIL is

opened to every single student. As a result, there are many differences as to how CLIL is put

into practice.

The purpose of this dissertation is to look at CLIL implementation in a school in La Rioja. We

will do this by asking teachers and learners about their views on CLIL and by exploring

learners’ attitudes towards this educational approach. In addition, we will look at the effect of

CLIL on learners’ receptive vocabulary. There are few studies on learners’ and teachers’

views on CLIL or learners’ attitudes towards CLIL, let alone research on the effect of CLIL

on the different dimensions of learners’ communicative competence. Particularly scarce are

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the studies that look at the effect of CLIL instruction on learners’ lexical competence in the

foreign language. However, vocabulary knowledge has proved to be a predictor of success or

failure in language education (see Agustín Llach 2006, Agustín Llach 2007). The present

study aims to contribute to research on CLIL and foreign language learning in the secondary

education setting, as well as to vocabulary research in non-native languages.

In order to provide the context for our research, we deem necessary to give an account of the

situation of CLIL in Spain with particular attention to La Rioja, this is provided in Section 2.

2. Implementation of CLIL in Spain: the case of La Rioja

In our account we will follow one of the most recent and up-to-date books on this issue: CLIL

in Spain, an edited collection published in 2010 by Lasagabaster and Ruiz de Zarobe that

addresses the implementation of CLIL in different parts of Spain. In addition, in our review of

CLIL in La Rioja we will fall back on Fernandez Fontecha 2009’s and 2010’s (in

Lasagabaster and Ruiz de Zarobe 2010) accounts. As far as we know so far these are the only

studies published on the issue on La Rioja community.

Concerning languages, the main idiosyncratic feature of Spain as a country is its linguistic

diversity. There are monolingual regions in which Spanish is the official language as for

instance La Rioja, Murcia or Madrid as well as bilingual regions where Spanish coexists with

the language of the community, as it is the case of Catalan, Basque, Galician or Valencian.

This situation affects the position of foreign languages in CLIL programs: in monolingual

communities, the foreign languages being boosted by CLIL are L2, whereas in bilingual

communities they are L3 or even L4.

In order to present the different implementations of CLIL in Spain we will firstly devote our

attention to those bilingual communities that have implemented some kind of CLIL

instruction and secondly we will shift our focus onto the monolingual communities. Regarding

the bilingual communities, we mean to present a brief summary of the situation of CLIL in the

Basque Autonomous Community (henceforth BAC), Catalonia, and Galician. Regarding the

monolingual communities we will set our eyes on the cases of Andalusia, Madrid, and La

Rioja, with a special emphasis on the last, as it has been mentioned above.

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Firstly, in the BAC there are different linguistic instructional programmes as Lasagabaster and

Ruiz de Zarobe (2010) note. Students may study subjects either through Basque or Spanish,

they can learn Basque or Spanish as a subject itself or, depending on the school, they can even

study some subjects through Basque and others through Spanish. This distribution of subjects

is a response to the objectives pursued by the linguistic policies in the Basque region, which

are as follows: it is intended that students reach different Common European Framework of

Reference (CEFR) levels at the end of the compulsory education i.e. B2+ for Basque and

Spanish, B1+ for English, and A2 for French.

Another case of CLIL implementation in a bilingual region is the Catalonian one –pictured by

Navés and Victori in Lasagabaster and Ruiz de Zarobe 2010-, if Basque coexists with Spanish

in the BAC, it is Catalan the language coexisting with Spanish in this North-eastern Spanish

region. CLIL began in Catalonia as early as the 1980s where 24 schools took place in the first

pilot programmes and the number kept increasing until reaching 135 schools in 2009.

According to Navés, in Lasagabaster and Ruiz de Zarobe 2010, the effectiveness of CLIL

relies on the stability of the programmes together with other important factors like parental

support.

The situation of CLIL in Galicia is depicted by San Isidro, in Lasagabaster and Ruiz de

Zarobe 2010, who posits that CLIL started in Galicia back in 1999 by means of pioneering

programmes. Since then, it has kept on increasing its presence –from 12 pioneer schools to

200 schools nowadays- as it happened in other regions a formal regulation took place in 2008.

This formal regulation involved implementing CLIL in all educational levels in primary and

secondary education whether through English or French. The main aim of CLIL in this

community as reported by San Isidro is to motivate teachers and students to learn more

additional languages.

Having pictured the CLIL situation in three Spanish bilingual communities, we are now

focusing on how CLIL is being implemented in some monolingual Spanish communities. Let

us begin with Andalusia. This Spanish region has traditionally been a monolingual community

but, according to Lorenzo, in Lasagabaster and Ruiz de Zarobe 2010, the issue of

globalisation, the importance of tourism, and the growing of international educative exchange

programmes –Erasmus, for instance-, and the immigration- due to its neighbouring side

related to its Mediterranean climate and its closeness to North-Africa-, made a turning point in

Andalusian linguistic policies.

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From Lorenzo’s point of view Andalusian PISA results in 2009 proved the existence of a

worrying low level in linguistic competences in students’ mother tongue, whereas at the same

time a great investment in bilingual education was giving good results and this situation led to

a change in educational policies; it inspired the CIL document (Curriculum Integrado de

Lenguas i.e. Integrated Curriculum of Languages) which was meant to change the bases of

mother tongue teaching by making it more communicative. At the very same time, some

subjects were to be also taught in foreign languages following the same communicative

methodologies. The key aspects of this new orientation are i) Genre-based approach, ii) Task-

based methods, iii) Centrality of texts and iv) Continuous assessment.

Accounting for the case of Madrid, Dafouz and Llinares, also in Lasagabaster and Ruiz de

Zarobe 2010, summarise the situation of CLIL in this region and they point out that there exist

two different CLIL programmes: on the one hand the MEC/British Council Project and, on the

other hand, the CAM (Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid) Bilingual Project. Regarding the

former, it began in 1996 and this project features the cooperation among Spanish native

teachers, bilingual UK teachers, and English native assistants from the UK who provide extra

exposure to students. The key points that characterize it are the usage of authentic English

materials, and students and staff collaboration and exchanges with English schools. However,

there are converging and diverging points between both projects; common to them it is the

fact that there are native assistants involved and also the exchanges among teachers and

students. Nevertheless there are differences too, for instance, the CAM Bilingual Project

offers methodology and language courses for teachers throughout the academic year, and

furthermore schools also enjoy an increase in funding, mainly for ICT and materials.

However, as the authors point out, the CLIL offer is not limited to primary and secondary

education; some universities in Madrid also offer a number of bilingual degrees where courses

are taught completely in English. This picture of the CLIL situation in Madrid allows us to be

aware that a great effort is being put into spreading CLIL, because it is being implemented on

primary and secondary education, being above 300 the total number of schools involved in

both projects. Should it be also taken into account the emphasis that is being put on tertiary

education.

This section on the implementation of CLIL in Spain will be completed by an account of

CLIL in La Rioja. We deem this review necessary in order to place the context for our study,

which is reported in section 4. As stated by Fernández Fontecha, in Lasagabaster and Ruiz de

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Zarobe 2010, La Rioja is a monolingual community where immigration and, above all,

tourism have a huge importance due to the culture of wine, The Way of St. James, and San

Millán de La Cogolla i.e. the cradle of the first Spanish words. The author points out the

existence of some initiatives designed to improve the teaching of foreign languages teaching

as for instance: the PILC Project (Proyectos de Innovación Lingüística en Centros, i.e. School

Language Innovation Projects) which consists of two different possibilities of using English or

French in the classroom: Type A, where the foreign language is employed for greetings,

routines, and instructions, and Type B, where part of the curriculum is taught in the foreign

language (FL). There has been a great increase in the number of schools that have adhered to

this instructional method, since back in 2005 only 10 schools were involved in this project;

however in 2009 there are 46 schools.

The Bilingual Sections are also summarised in Fernández Fontecha in Lasagabaster and Ruiz

de Zarobe 2010 and it is explained that it is a different way to implement CLIL in schools in

La Rioja: In this case at least two subjects can be taught in a foreign language if the total

number of hours taught in the foreign language does not surpass the 50% of the total hours of

the curriculum.

So far we have briefly portrayed the situation of CLIL in Spain and we can conclude that it is

not consistent at all. As it happened with the different implementations in the European

countries, differences also arise between different regions of the same country. As authors

state, in spite of its diversity CLIL seems to be effective and produce good results. However,

research that looks at the effectiveness of CLIL in an empirical way is still scarce and usually

focuses on one aspect of CLIL. Therefore results cannot be generalised. Research is urgently

needed, particularly research that looks at CLIL in a more comprehensive way: that is,

research that looks at the main participants involved in the CLIL experience such as students

and teachers. This is what we have attempted by means of the study reported in this

dissertation. Therefore, having given an overview of CLIL, explained the main reasons for its

rapid spread, as well as how it is being implemented in Europe and more specifically in La

Rioja, it is time to move to the description of this empirical study whose general objectives are

formulated in the next section.

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3. Objectives

First of all, one of the main objectives of this dissertation is to describe how CLIL is being

implemented in a school in La Rioja by means of asking teachers’ and students’ themselves

their views on CLIL.

Secondly, we set out to test the effectiveness of CLIL compared to English as a subject on two

sides: (i) learners’ attitudes towards English language, and (ii) learners’ performance on a

receptive vocabulary test in English.

Thirdly, as CLIL is in an almost embryonic stage, we believe it is necessary to identify the

problems and difficulties teachers encounter when implementing CLIL in their classroom

settings as well as the effect of this educational approach on learners’ attitudes towards

foreign languages. Needless to say of the importance for vocabulary and language education

researchers of gathering information on the possible effect of CLIL on an important dimension

of learners’ communicative competence: vocabulary knowledge.

4. Review of the literature

In this section we first begin by providing working definitions of key terms in this study such

as beliefs, attitudes and motivation. We then move on to review the literature on the following

areas of research:

i) Studies on learners’ and teachers’ beliefs, and learners’ and teachers’ attitudes

towards foreign languages, particularly towards English and English language

teaching/learning both in CLIL and in non-CLIL classes.

ii) Studies on the effectiveness of CLIL on general language proficiency as well as on

specific aspects of communicative competence with particular attention to studies

on the relation between CLIL and EFL learners’ lexical competence.

4.1. Working Definitions

Each term that will be defined here has received considerable attention in different areas such

as Educational linguistics, Second Language Acquisition, Bilingualism and Multilingualism,

and Vocabulary studies. Due to the empirical nature of our study as well as to space

limitations, we will not display all the definitions available for each term in the literature, nor

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will we enter into theoretical discussions about the adequacy of each term in comparison to

others. Instead, we will adopt a practical stance and we will define these terms out of a well-

known reference in the field of applied linguistics: Richards & Schmidt’s (2002) Dictionary of

Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics.

Belief systems

in language teaching, ideas and theories that teachers and learners hold about themselves, teaching, language learning and their students (Richards & Schmidt, 2002: 49).

Teacher belief systems

in language teaching, ideas and theories that teachers hold about themselves, teaching, language, learning and their students. Teachers’ beliefs are thought to be stable constructs derived from their experience, observations, training and other sources and serve as a source of reference when teachers encounter new ideas, sometimes impeding the acceptance of new ideas or practices. Beliefs also serve as the source of teachers’ classroom practices. Beliefs form a system or network that may be difficult to change. In teacher education a focus on belief systems is considered important since teacher development involves the development of skills and knowledge as well as the development or modification of belief systems (Richards & Schmidt, 2002: 541)

Learner Beliefs also learner belief systems

ideas learners have concerning different aspects of language, language learning and language teaching, that may influence their attitudes and motivations in learning and have an effect on their learning strategies and learning outcomes. Learners’ belief systems are relatively stable sets of ideas and attitudes about such things as how to learn language, effective teaching strategies, appropriate classroom behaviour, their own abilities, and their goals in language learning…(Richards & Schmidt, 2002:297).

Language Attitudes

the attitudes which speakers of different languages or language varieties have towards each other’s languages or to their own language. Expressions of positive or negative feelings towards a language may reflect impressions of linguistic difficulty or simplicity, ease or difficulty of learning, degree of importance, elegance, social status, etc. Attitudes towards a language may also show what people feel about the speakers of that language. Language attitudes may have an effect on second language or foreign language learning. The measurement of language attitudes provides information which is useful in language teaching and language planning (Richards & Schmidt, 2002: 286).

Motivation

In general, the driving force in any situation that leads to action. In the field of language learning a distinction is sometimes made between an orientation, a class of reasons for learning a language, and motivation itself, which refers to a combination of the learner’s attitudes, desires, and willingness to expend effort in order to learn the second language.

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Orientations include an integrative orientation, characterized by a willingness to be like valued members of the language community, and an instrumental orientation towards more practical concerns such as getting a job or passing an examination. The construct of integrative motivation (most prominently associated with R. C. Gardner) therefore includes the integrative orientation, positive attitudes towards both the target language community and the language classroom and a commitment to learn the language. Another widely cited distinction is between intrinsic motivation, enjoyment of language learning itself, and extrinsic motivation, driven by external factors such as parental pressure, societal expectations, academic requirements, or other sources of rewards and punishments. Other theories of motivation emphasize the balance between the value attached to some activity and one’s expectation of success in doing it, goal setting, the learner’s attributions of success or failure, the role of self-determination and learners autonomy, and the characteristics of effective motivational thinking. Motivation is generally considered to be one of the primary causes of success and failure in second language learning (Richards & Schmidt, 2002: 343-4).

Some reflections on the above definitions

As we have just seen in the above definitions, motivation and attitudes towards language play

an important role in learners’ linguistic achievement. Regarding the Spanish context, the

strength of their role has been demonstrated by Pérez 2006, and Delfín de Manzanilla 2007.

These scholars observe how attitudes may have a positive or a negative influence over

academic achievement. Therefore, it is essential for teachers and learners to be aware of this

motivational and attitudinal influence; they should identify the different kinds of motivation in

order to do their utmost possible effort. Ideally, there should be a reciprocal relationship

among teachers and students in any given teaching-learning environment, and we can guess

that the more and better motivated the teacher the more and the better motivated the learner is,

and better results are achieved.

When dealing with a group of adolescents–as it is the case in the present study- we should put

a greater emphasis on the teacher’s role as a motivator and even greater in a CLIL school

setting. And this is not only because of the shift of the teacher’s role in a CLIL classroom

setting but also, due to the psychological features of adolescents, like their easily influenced

personalities. However, after reviewing some articles about teachers’ perceptions on CLIL and

on language teaching (Crawford 2001, Yazid 2003, Borrul et al. 2008, Pena Díaz and Porto

Requejo 2008) we come to the conclusion that theory and practice do not walk hand in hand:

teachers acknowledge the importance and necessity of motivation although they do not or

cannot pay as much attention to enhance learners’ motivation through teaching as it might be

expected. Meanwhile, teachers involved in CLIL school settings accept its benefits and its

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effectiveness over other methodologies but are mostly reluctant to change their traditional

teaching methods or they corner it by means of making a sparse use of the method.

On the other hand, we find attitudes. As it has been stated in the above definitions, attitudes

mostly entail emotions and beliefs, which are more of a personal issue rather than something

objective. It is difficult to differentiate between motivation and attitudes. Gardner himself (in

Liuoliene and Metiuniene, 2006) considered motivation as a construct made up of different

elements among them, there are attitudes. Going further into attitudes’ classification, Ellis

(1997) in Lennartsson 2008, divides them into positive and negative attitudes towards

language. This differentiation implies that positive attitudes foster language learning whereas

negative attitudes impede language learning. As it happens to motivation, attitudes can change

since they are not fixed, thus negative attitudes can turn into positive attitudes and vice versa.

So far we have seen how attitudes relate to language learning, but attitudes are not simply

restricted to language learning. In other words, attitudes have to do with the feelings that any

speaker may have towards any language; these feelings can be either positive or negative

which, in turn, may have an influence over the speaker’s opinion towards language learning.

Attitudes and motivation play a main role when it comes down to language and even more to

language learning. This may explain the great amount of attention that has been paid to this

issue in applied linguistics.

4.2. Evidence on the effect of CLIL

The notions of beliefs, attitudes and motivation have been briefly presented, however no word

has been said about the relationship between these variables and CLIL, nor on the relation

between CLIL and learners’ lexical competence, aspects that are crucial in our study. The aim

of this section is to provide an account of the studies that look at the interrelationship of these

topics. As it has been explained in the introduction, there is a common agreement on the

benefits of CLIL as for instance: the formation of positive beliefs and attitudes towards

foreign languages and cultures, learners’ development of cognitive abilities, and above all, the

natural acquisition of the foreign language by means of focusing on content. Given the

diversity of experiences that can be found in the implementation of CLIL in foreign language

class settings, it is absolutely necessary to systematise research on the effect of CLIL as to

identify when, how and at what level of language competence this approach is most effective.

The remaining of this section will be structured as follows: firstly we will look at studies

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which have focussed on teachers’ and learners’ beliefs and learners’ attitudes towards CLIL.

Secondly, we will review studies on the effect of CLIL on several aspects of learners’ non-

native competence.

4.2.1. Beliefs, motivation and attitudes towards CLIL: empirical evidence

Regarding attitudes and motivation, research has shown their strong influence on different

aspects of language learning. A first search in the literature on motivation and attitudes

towards languages and language learning yields an impressive collection of studies. Space

restriction advises us to be selective rather than exhaustive on our review. Therefore, we will

have a closer look on i) studies that explore the relationship between motivation and L2/L3

language achievement, ii) studies that look at learners’ attitudes towards an L2/L3, and iii)

studies that investigate learners’ attitudes towards English as L2/L3; iv) research that

combines the study of CLIL and attitude/motivation/perceptions.

4.2.2. Motivation and language achievement

In the first place, we will focus on motivation and language achievement. We find evidence of

the relation of these two variables in Pérez (2006) and also in Sevim Inal and Saracaloglu

(2007). These studies show that a high motivation in the foreign language involves positive

attitudes towards the language, and it also conveys better academic language achievement.

Furthermore, Sevim Inal and Saracaloglu (2007) as well as other scholars as Karahan 2007,

Lennartsson 2008, and Verma 2008 observe that according to learners, teachers are one of the

most decisive factors influencing positive attitudes. The importance of the role of the teacher

as a motivator seems to be consistent in all learning periods and ages, from pre-teens in

primary education (Karahan, 2007) to senior learners (older than fifty) enrolled in university

studies (Lennartsson, 2008). These studies reinforce the theory summarised by Richards and

Schmidt (2002) in the definitions provided above (section 4.1), proving the influence of

motivation with respect to achievement.

4.2.3. Studies on attitudes towards language learning

Regarding studies that have addressed the issue of attitudes towards language learning, we

find Delfín de Manzanilla (2007) who show that university learners are both internally and

externally motivated towards language, and they are willing to communicate in the foreign

language. University students also hold positive attitudes towards foreign language speakers.

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Likewise they have positive attitudes towards bilingualism (Mohideen Obeidat 2005).

Research also points out that teachers are one of the main sources for motivation whether

positive or negative. These results reported by Mohideen Obeidat (2005) can also be similarly

found in González Ardeo (2003) since he concluded that Spanish and Basque bilinguals and

Spanish or Basque monolinguals university students show positive attitudes towards English

although they are reluctant to be taught in English.

There are other studies (see Liuolienė and Metiūnienė, 2006), which apart from reaffirming

the importance of motivation in the learning process do reveal that students’ wishes and needs

to work independently depend on their motivation. These studies also indicate that the greater

the motivation, the more autonomous students want to be in their learning process. In our

opinion, this latter assertion can be related to one of the main assumptions advocated by

CLIL: the claim that it fosters cognition and learners’ independent learning, therefore,

following this premise, a big amount of attention should be put on motivation.

However, primary and secondary school students are not as motivated as elder learners

regarding foreign language learning (Karahan 2007, Yassin et al. 2009). Research has shown

that this lesser motivation has to do with the minimum contact learners experience with the

language outside the classroom context; they are not motivated to learn a language because

they do not think it is useful for their everyday life. Furthermore, in our view, this difference

in motivation between university students and primary or secondary students may be also

related to their ages: university students are closer to the job market –if not already there- and

they may consider learning a foreign language could help them to get a better job or a higher

salary (extrinsic motivation).

Being aware of learners’ attitudes towards foreign languages is of paramount importance for

teachers and researchers, but even more important is to be aware of learners’ attitudes towards

language teaching methodologies. As we have seen, studies have proved that teachers are one

of the main driving forces in motivation; let’s not forget that the main bond between teachers

and learners is the classroom, i.e. the methodology the teacher uses. In this regard, it seems

logical to think that teaching methodologies have a clear influence on making language

learning more or less appealing to the eyes of the learner.

Savignon and Wang (2003) and Verma (2008) conducted research in order to ascertain

university students’ motivation and attitudes towards language learning. Regarding

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methodology, common findings are observed in these studies: students prefer and are more

motivated with a communicative approach rather than with grammar-focused lessons.

Furthermore, following the previous assertions about the role of the teacher, data resulting

from these studies suggest that teachers are the main motivator for learners. These results are

in agreement with the ones attained by Lennartsson (2008) since the learners in this study also

consider that teachers influence positively or negatively their attitudes towards language.

4.2.4. Views and attitudes related to CLIL

In order to complete our review we need to have a look at the different studies that have

combined these attitudinal factors with learning in a CLIL context. First of all, we will focus

on students, and then we will procedure accordingly with teachers.

Students

Studies on students’ perceptions on CLIL are scarce; in our review we will fall back on

Dalton-Puffer et al. (2009)’s study, which presents the views of Austrian university students

involved in a CLIL programme. The results provided by these authors are of great value to us,

as their findings do not seem to be fortuitous since 1660 former CLIL students answered a

questionnaire and 20 students actually involved in CLIL completed a deep interview. The

main results obtained in this study are summarised as follows: a) CLIL encourages learners to

talk and to think by themselves, b) They feel more motivated because the teacher is the

language expert and the subject expert at the same time, c) Students focus more on

communication than on grammatical correctness, and d) CLIL lacks organization in the way it

is implemented. Looking at these assertions closely we note that there is agreement between

students’ views involved in a CLIL programme and the theoretical virtues attributed to CLIL.

We will now turn our attention on students’ attitudes towards CLIL. To this respect we will

refer to two studies that have dealt with this issue in secondary school settings: Lasagabaster

and Sierra (2009) and Yassin et al. (2009).

On the one hand, the main object in Yassin et al. (2009) is to document the experiences of

learners and to ascertain their views towards the teaching of Science through English in

Malaysia. The study was conducted with “Year 4” students and the main findings were that

NLEP (Non-Limited English Proficiency) learners have significantly more positive attitudes

towards Science in English, greater parental support, and experience of using the English

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language than LEP (Limited English Proficiency) learners. On the other hand, Lasagabaster

and Sierra (2009) present the differences in language attitudes between CLIL students and

non-CLIL students EFL learners in secondary education in the BAC. They also focus on how

gender and social class have an influence on motivation towards foreign languages. This study

reports that students who are involved in a CLIL programme show better attitudes towards

English as well as towards other languages -Basque and Spanish in this case- and find learning

English easier than EFL students do. Differences in favour of CLIL are significant. However,

an accurate interpretation of the results is not possible since the study does not provide the

number of hours of exposure to English, the characteristics of CLIL subjects and the length of

the programme. Without this information the comparison with other studies is not possible.

Teachers

Having dealt with students’ views on CLIL, we can now cast an eye over studies reporting

teachers’ views about language teaching and CLIL. Although research on these topics is not

plentiful the few studies found provide an insight of how teachers perceive the CLIL

experience.

According to Crawford (2001), teachers are aware of the relationship between motivation and

achievement. This author concluded that Taiwanese primary education teachers find hard to

motivate their students because they do not perceive English as a useful subject. Furthermore,

Taiwanese teachers preferred a communicative approach on language teaching, although

students’ low competence makes its implementation difficult, besides Taiwanese teaching

tradition emphasized reading and writing over speaking and listening. Students’ low

competence is not exclusive to Taiwan as other studies seem to have arrive at a similar

conclusion and highlight this point as one of the main weaknesses or problems that impedes

implementing CLIL satisfactorily (see Yazid 2003, Infante et al. 2008, and Pena Díaz and

Porto Requejo 2008).

According to teachers involved in CLIL programs, another common obstacle is the lack of

specific CLIL materials. This conveys a large workload for teachers as they have to create or

adapt others’ materials (Yazid 2003, Borrull et. al 2008, and Pena Díaz and Porto Requejo

2008). Some teachers also show their willingness to follow a communicative approach in the

class; however they find it difficult as a consequence of learners’ low linguistic competence.

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A close look at the results of the above studies reveals that teachers’ views are in agreement

with CLIL assumptions since they share its effectiveness and its impact on cognition and

motivation. Likewise, results on teachers’ views also reveal the important role played by

attitudes towards CLIL: Borrull et al. (2008) posit that the main handicap for CLIL

implementation is the “negative attitude of learners”. In our opinion, and following other

observations noted in these researchers, negative attitudes are closely related to learners’ low

competence in the target language: as they cannot follow the class, they become strongly

discouraged, and, as a result, they may develop negative attitudes towards this approach.

So far the literature review has provided us with the views of the main participants in a CLIL

school; furthermore, this review has allowed us to note how attitudes have an out-of-doubt

influence on learners’ achievement. Researchers claim that both learners and teachers regard

CLIL as an effective approach. Theoretical premises and CLIL participants’ perceptions

match up, nevertheless still some problems and difficulties remain. In the next section we shift

our focus on studies that look at the effectiveness of CLIL on different aspects of learners’

communicative competence. At this point our aim is to ascertain whether the outcomes

attained by empirical studies support CLIL theory as well as learners’ and teachers’ views on

CLIL.

4.2.5. Studies on the effect of CLIL on learners’ language competence

Research on the effect of CLIL on learners’ language competence is rather scarce when

compared to the great number of studies on the implementation of CLIL or research on

theories and principles of CLIL. Moreover, its systematisation is rather complex. The reason

is that the studies aimed at ascertaining the effectiveness of CLIL differ a great deal at least on

the following respects: the characteristics of the language learning contexts where CLIL was

implemented, learners’ age and mother tongue as well as learners’ level in the target language,

or the specific dimension of learners’ competence that is investigated. Comparisons among the

studies, let alone generalizations of outcomes are risky due to the huge variation among the

existing studies but also because of the lack of information regarding the number of hours of

CLIL received by the learners participating in the studies. This information is needed in order

to compare outcomes but unfortunately, the number of hours of CLIL is not usually reported

in most studies.

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In spite of the above limitations, we believe that it is necessary to examine the results achieved

by previous studies. Moved by this conviction, in the next paragraphs we will attempt to

classify them according to the dimensions of communicative competence as put forward by

Canale and Swain (1980): grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse

competence, strategic competence. To these dimensions we will add lexical competence.

Canale and Swain include vocabulary under the category of grammatical competence;

however, due to the multifaceted nature of vocabulary knowledge, lexical competence is

nowadays studied on its own (see Nation 2001).

The clarification of studies on the different dimensions of lexical competence was addressed

by Jiménez Catalán (2002). Bringing together opinions from experienced vocabulary

researchers on what means to know a word, she concluded that it is hard to provide a simple

definition of lexical competence due to the multifaceted nature of words, and she summarised

some defining features of lexical competence such as the fact that: i) knowledge of words is

accumulative, ii) it is not fixed, it can change throughout life; iii) it may vary from person to

person, depending on different factors such as gender, age, experience, and cognitive

development. Therefore, we will bear some of these determining factors in mind while

reviewing the existing literature in order to lay the foundations for a more exhaustive and

better subsequent comparison with the results of our own study.

Most studies on the effectiveness on CLIL reveal, as theory and teachers and learners’ views

pointed out, that this approach entails better results for learners in most aspects of

communicative competence and language skills as for instance: pronunciation, syntax,

pragmatics, informal use of language, or reading comprehension, or writing (Admiraal et al.

2005, Agustín Llach and Jiménez Catalán 2007, Dalton-Puffer 2007, Huttner and Rieder-

Bunemann 2007, Llinares and Whittaker 2007, Jiménez Catalán and Ruiz de Zarobe (eds.)

2009, Sylvén 2010). In the following paragraphs we will give a brief account of some of the

studies that have focused on the effect of CLIL on dimensions of EFL learners’ lexical

competence.

CLIL has been proved to have a positive influence on lexical competence as shown in Jiménez

Catalán, Ruiz de Zarobe and Cenoz (2006) where they acknowledged that CLIL learners

display higher lexical richness and sophistication in the vocabulary they use in compositions,

as well as higher receptive vocabulary knowledge as measured by the 1000 and 2000

frequency bands of Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT). This study is not the only one to ascertain

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differences in favour of CLIL. Agustín Llach and Jiménez Catalán (2007) studied how the

type of instruction affected lexical reiteration and productive vocabulary in written texts;

results confirm again that students involved in a CLIL environment perform better than non-

CLIL learners. However, they also remark that both CLIL and non-CLIL EFL learners resort

to repetition rather than to synonyms or antonyms suggesting similar mechanisms of lexical

cohesion by CLIL and non CLIL EFL learners.

Ruiz de Zarobe and Jiménez Catalán (2009) edited a book that encompasses different studies

that compare CLIL learners to non-CLIL learners with respect to different aspects of lexical

competence such as receptive vocabulary, word association, transfer between languages

(Spanish-English) or use of inflected forms in English among others. In all cases but one

CLIL students achieved better results than non-CLIL learners: Ojeda Alba (in Ruiz de Zarobe

and Jiménez Catalán 2009) compared the vocabulary most frequently implemented by both

groups showing that the non-CLIL had better results in certain vocabulary areas. The results

of the latter study go in line with results attained by Jiménez Catalán & Ojeda Alba (2009),

where they found that non-CLIL students produced a higher number of word types than CLIL

students in a lexical availability task.

Apart from these mentioned competences, there are other extra linguistic aspects that have

been studied i.e. the effects of extramural exposure to English on learners’ vocabularies

(Sylvén 2006). Sylvén argues that CLIL students have more contact with English outside the

school than non-CLIL students and this greater amount of exposure affects positively their

self-assessment in English. In a latter longitudinal study (Sylvén 2010) she also contrasted the

differences in vocabulary size between a group of CLIL students and a group of EFL students.

She reports that CLIL students performed better in all tests; however she highlights the

importance of the exposure to English outside the class because some EFL students, those

who affirmed having a wide contact with English outside the class –reading, T.V., Internet…-,

were among the top scorers.

The amount of exposure to English is a controversial issue to some extent in the field of

language learning. Miralpeix (2007) studied the influence of exposure with regards to

language learning. Her study reveals that one group with greater exposure –74 hours more-

performed similarly to two other groups that had received less exposure to English. This fact

leads us to think about the importance of methodology; since these findings seem to contradict

studies where learners with more hours of exposure through CLIL have better results (see

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Jiménez Catalán and Ruiz de Zarobe (eds.) 2009). One of the main differences concerning

learners involved in both studies seems to be the methodological approach: in Jiménez Catalán

and Ruiz de Zarobe we mainly find comparisons on CLIL and non CLIL EFL learners while

Miralpeix makes no reference to CLIL.

In order to close this review on studies on the effectiveness of CLIL on EFL learners’

competences, we find mandatory to comment on that, as happened with the studies on

students’ views, some researchers make clear that CLIL students are more motivated than

non-CLIL students and it influences their achievement (Admiral el al. 2005; Sylvén 2006;

Huttner and Rieder-Bunemann 2007).

4.3. Conclusion

In this section we have attempted to review studies on teachers’ and learners’ beliefs, attitudes

and motivation towards CLIL, along with studies on the effect of CLIL on the different

aspects of learners’ language competence with particular attention to aspects of lexical

competence. As we have seen, although scarce, there is research on almost every variable

involved in CLIL: teachers, learners, subjects, CLIL activities, and language learning

contexts. Likewise, there are studies on almost each dimension of communicative and lexical

competence. However, as far as we know, there is no research that looks at the main

participants in the CLIL experience within the same school, let alone through a whole

educational stage. Most studies conducted so far give a partial view of CLIL as they focus on

one single aspect. In our opinion, in order to advance in the understanding of CLIL it is

necessary to adopt a more comprehensive view that may yield in a more detailed picture on

the beliefs, attitudes, motivations and practices of the main participants in the CLIL

experience. Therefore, in the study reported in this dissertation we set out to investigate

teachers’ and learners’ views on CLIL, learners’ attitudes towards English and CLIL,

teachers’ CLIL practices, and learners’ outcomes under the same scenario: the school where

CLIL is being implemented. We do not set out to look at CLIL with preconceptions; rather we

attempt to give a description of its reality by means of asking teachers and learners

themselves, and by means of observing the possible effects of CLIL on learners’ performance

on vocabulary tests. We believe that the adoption of a comprehensive approach in our study

will provide us with invaluable data to identify strengths but also to detect possible

weaknesses in the early stages of implementation of CLIL in the community of La Rioja.

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5. Research questions

In this dissertation we pose the following research questions concerning the main participants

in a CLIL school:

Regarding students,

1) Do students believe that CLIL helps them to improve their English?

2) According to the students, what skills do they improve most by means of CLIL?

3) What attitudes do students have towards English language?

4) Do CLIL students hold better attitudes than non-CLIL students?

5) Do CLIL students score higher than non-CLIL students on vocabulary tests?

6) Is there a positive relation between learners’ attitude towards English and learners’

scores on vocabulary tests?

Regarding teachers,

1) What is the professional profile of the CLIL teacher?

2) What kind of motivation do teachers have towards English and CLIL?

3) How is CLIL implemented in this school?

4) According to teachers, is CLIL effective?

5) Have they encountered problems or difficulties in the implementation of CLIL?

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6. Method

6.1. Informants

The sample of informants consists of 403 students, 3 CLIL teachers, and 2 EFL teachers from

one private middle class school in Logroño1. Although these groups are interrelated in our

study, for the sake of clarity, they will all be presented in separate sections.

Students

The study encompasses the school whole population as regards secondary education (SE) in

the school year 2009-2010. The population comprises 403 students distributed among the four

compulsory years of Spanish secondary education: first, second, third, and fourth ESO.

Students’ ages range from 12 to 16. Table 1 shows the distribution of students by school grade

and age range:

Table 1 Distribution of students by school year and age range

Grade 1st year 2nd year 3rd year 4th year

N 104 99 108 92

Age range 12-13 years old 13-14 years old 14-15 years old 15-16 years old

Regarding mother tongue, most students are monolingual speakers of Spanish as L1, whereas

a small group of students have Spanish as L2. Their mother tongues are: Romanian, Arabic,

Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Russian, Senegalese, and Urdu.2 The distribution of students’

mother tongues is displayed in Table 2.

Table 2 Distribution of students by mother tongue

Sp Rom Arabic Bulg Cat Chin Rus Sen Urdu

392 4 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 The school provides education at all educational levels, from preschool to Professional Courses. 2 Spanish native speakers born in South or Central America are not included in this group; they belong to the Spanish natives group according to our classification.

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At this point it is necessary to make a further description of the characteristics of CLIL

throughout the fourth grades in the school we investigate. The main difference between CLIL

and non-CLIL groups lies on the fact that the former received additional hours of exposure to

English language by means of CLIL methodology. However, the number of hours is far from

being equal, neither throughout the grades nor within each grade. Regarding CLIL, the

situation of the school is rather complex and needs clarification. We tackle this issue in the

following paragraphs.

Figure 1: Distribution of students by type of instruction per year

CLIL Vs. Non-CLIL instruction

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

1 2 3 4

S.E. year

Stu

dent

s

CLIL

Non-CLIL

1st year: only 3 out of 105 students have some previous CLIL experience throughout primary

education. However the number of hours of exposure to English could not be calculated; the

reason is that these three students were new to the school and it was not a goal of this study to

trace learners’ previous CLIL experience in other schools but to focus on CLIL in one school.

2nd year: 28 out of 99 students had studied at least one subject by means of CLIL. However,

the total number of hours could not be calculated either because the teacher in charge of the

CLIL subject had left the school or because the students studied the CLIL subjects at a

different school.

3rd year: the vast majority of students (96 out 108) had some CLIL experience. The total

number of CLIL hours per student ranges from 10 to 30 depending on the subjects studied

through English.

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Figure 2: Distribution of 3rd year students by the amount of CLIL hours received

CLIL hours S.E. 3rd year

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

No CLIL Up to 15 15 to 30 Unknw on

Total amount of hours

Stu

dent

s

4th year: a high percentage of students had some kind of CLIL experience: 75 out of 94. In this

case, students had studied from one to three subjects in English. The total number of CLIL

hours ranges between 10 to 90 depending on the different subjects studied by the informants

all along secondary education.

Figure 3: Distribution of 4th year students by the amount of CLIL hours received

CLIL hours S.E. 4th year

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

No CLIL Up to 15 15 to 30 30 to 60 60 to 90

Total amount of hours

Stu

dent

s

Teachers

In this case the sample is made up of two different specialist groups of teachers, on the one

hand the CLIL teachers and on the other the EFL teachers. Regarding the former, the sample

consists of 3 informants whose ages range between 30 to 45 years. Their teaching experience

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goes from 7 years of the youngest teacher to 18 years; however they all have the same CLIL

teaching experience having used this methodology for 3 academic years.

Finally, the sample of EFL teachers was made up of 2 teachers in a 50 to 55 years range and

their EFL teaching experience was as long as 32 years in each case.

6.2. Data collection instruments

Students were asked to complete a productive vocabulary test, a receptive vocabulary test and

a questionnaire containing questions about their perceptions towards English and some further

personal information. The tests and the questionnaire were completed in one single session

(50-55 minutes).

As far as the vocabulary tests are concerned, in the first place, and following the conventions,

the Productive Vocabulary Levels Test (VLTP) was administered to students. These received

oral and written instructions in Spanish on how to complete the test. The time given for test

completion was 15 minutes.

After the productive test was handed in, students were given the 2000 and 3000 bands of the

receptive Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) (Schmitt, 2001). They had 10 minutes to complete

each band. The procedures were as follows: firstly, students accomplished the 2000 VLT,

then, once completed, students had to accomplish the 3000 VLT under the very same

conditions of time and instructions as in the 2000 VLT band.

Finally, students were asked to fill in a questionnaire designed for the purpose of the task.

Some questions were added asking information about the students’ CLIL experience and their

perceptions and attitudes on it.

In addition, teachers were interviewed on individual basis. The interviews were informal but

guided (see appendix iv). The purpose was to collect information on the following issues: (a)

Professional profiles, (b) Motivation towards English and CLIL, (c) Implementation of CLIL

in the classroom. In other words, by means of informal but guided interviews we aimed at

gathering information on teaching experience, level of proficiency in English, subjects taught

in English, views on learning English and CLIL methodology, the way they were

implementing CLIL in the school, the types of materials used, the activities done in the class,

or the skills they were trying to boost in their pupils. On its part, EFL teachers were asked

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about their views on CLIL and its possible effect on learners’ improvement in English as

compared to traditional classes (English as a subject).

6.3. Type of research

The present thesis makes use of quantitative and qualitative methods. The former is used in

the quantification of learners’ survey responses as well as in the quantification of their scores

to the vocabulary tests. As to the qualitative method, we proceeded to interview both the CLIL

teachers and the non-CLIL teachers. The purpose was to trace a profile of learners and

teachers regarding perceptions and attitudes to CLIL as well as the effect of CLIL on learners’

performance on vocabulary tests.

6.4. Procedures

Once the data gathering was completed, we proceeded to score the Vocabulary Level Tests

giving one point to each correct answer and no point for incorrect answers, in that the

maximum total score for each test was 30 points, being the minimum 0 points.

After correcting the tests we typed the results into the computer together with the results of the

questionnaire completed by students so it was possible to analyze them by means of different

programs. Regarding the questionnaire, although participants had to fill in some questions

about their personal experience with English language and other personal questions, for the

purpose of this study we decided to focus only the questions concerning students’ perceptions

on CLIL and their opinions on English language.

Finally, after having typed the scores to the VLT as well as responses to the questionnaire we

proceeded to the quantitative analysis of the data, which was completed using different

statistic tests (including here Kolmogorov-Smirnov-Lilliefors, Shapiro-Wilk, and Mann-

Whitney among others tests) where needed by means of SPSS3

3 We would like to wholeheartedly acknowledge Montserrat San Martín, lecturer at the Mathematics and Computing Department of the University of La Rioja, for her invaluable help in test selection and statistical data analysis.

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7. Results

In this section, we attempt to reply the research questions posed earlier (see section 5, page

20) by providing data elicited from students and teachers belonging to a CLIL school. In the

first place we will provide the data obtained from students on their views on CLIL, their

attitudes towards English, and their results in the VLT vocabulary test. Then, we will present

teachers’ views on CLIL.

7.1. Students’ views on CLIL

As to our first research question, ‘Do students think that CLIL helps them to improve their

English?’ The answer is negative since according to more than 80% of the students, CLIL is

not considered as a useful experience. Figure 4 reveals that most of the students who had

received CLIL instruction report that CLIL was either of ‘very little help’ or ‘little help’. None

of the students considered CLIL as ‘very helpful’.

Figure 4: Distribution of responses given by students regarding their views on CLIL

Is CLIL helpful according to students?

0

20

40

60

80

100

N/A Nothelpful

Very little Little Quite Very

Stu

dent

s

Regarding our second research question, ‘What skills have students improved most by means

of CLIL?’ two tendencies clearly emerge in the data shown in Figure 5. In the first place, a

great number of students reported ‘listening’ and ‘speaking’ as the most positively influenced

skills. Secondly, we see that 3rd year followed by 4th year are the courses that concentrate the

highest number of students who report CLIL to have been of help in the improvement of their

language skills (mainly listening). Contrary to what might have been expected, a noticeable

percentage of students felt that CLIL had not boosted any of their skills. Also, as we can

observe in Figure 5, vocabulary is included together with the four skills. The reason for its

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inclusion here is that all the students who believed that CLIL had helped them in the

improvement of the four language skills also referred to the positive effect of CLIL on the

development of their lexicons.

Figure 5: Distribution of skills improved per course

Skills improved by CLIL according to students

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Reading Listening Writing Speaking Vocabulary None

Linguistic skills

Stu

dent

s

S.E. 1

S.E. 2

S.E. 3

S. E. 4

7.2. Students’ attitudes towards English

We now turn our attention to students’ attitudes towards English (RQ3), including here the

two groups of students: CLIL and non-CLIL. To this purpose, both groups were asked to rate

English according to an attitudinal scale made up of positive and negative adjectives (item 15

in the questionnaire). The minimum score is 1 and the maximum 7. The means show that

CLIL students and non CLIL students hold very similar attitudes towards English language,

although the means are slightly higher for the CLIL group throughout the four years. A close

look at Table 3 reveals that the highest scores, therefore the most motivated students, were

obtained by CLIL students in the last year of Spanish Secondary Education: 4th ESO.

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Table 3: CLIL and non-CLIL students’ attitudes towards English

CLIL N Mean S.D.

1st year NO 101 5,5000 , 88829

YES 3 5,6250 , 78062

2nd year NO 69 5,5236 , 94136

YES 28 5,5625 , 69264

3rd year NO 13 5,2692 1,47624

YES 95 5,6018 1,03188

4th year NO 19 5,5977 , 58097

YES 73 5,7072 , 66836

Although CLIL students score higher in their attitude towards English all through the four

years, these differences were not statistically significant, as the results of Mann-Whitney U

test applied to the means gave us the following values4 as regards 1st year (U = 137,000 z =

,778), 2nd year (U = 917,500 z = ,699), and 3rd year (U = 556,000 z= ,561).

These high values of do not allow us to affirm that these differences found between CLIL

students and non-CLIL students are significant.

Regarding 4th year, the t-test5 performed showed non-significant differences either between

CLIL and non-CLIL students. Results show a high value (t=0,516) and we cannot affirm that

these are significant because the p-value should be less than 0,05 (p<0,05)

7.3. Students’ vocabulary outcomes

In this section we mean to present the results obtained by our informants in the receptive VLT

in its 2000 and 3000 words band version. Before getting any deeper in this respect it must be

said that due to space limitations here we will present solely the results corresponding to 4th

year of ESO. The reason for focusing on this course rather than the other three is that 4th ESO

stands for the final stage of Spanish secondary education. Furthermore, we will also present

4 The Kolmogorov-Smirnov-Lilliefors Test run for normality testing showed the sample did not have a normal distribution (p<0.05). 5 the Kolmogorov Smirnov-Lilliefors Test showed that the sample had a normal distribution (p> 0,05), thus as the assumption of normality was met, a parametric test was used to compare the two groups.

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the results obtained from analyzing the relationship between attitudes towards English,

presented above, and students’ achievement measured by means of VLT 2000 and VLT 3000.

As it can be seen in Figure 6, CLIL and non-CLIL students performed similarly, although

students having received some kind of CLIL instruction performed slightly higher in the two

frequency bands than those who had not. The CLIL group obtained 19.85 correct answers in

VLT 2k, whereas the EFL group obtained 18.5 in the same test. However, in VLT 3k results

are much closer being 16.14 the average score obtained by CLILs and 16.00 the average score

by the EFL group.

As expected, both groups obtained higher scores in the VLT 2k rather than in the VLT 3k and

differences between CLILs and non-CLILs are also greater in the former test.

Figure 6: 4th year CLIL and non CLIL students’ scores in VLT 2k and 3k

VLT Results in S.E. 4th year

0

5

10

15

20

25

VLT 2k VLT 3k

Cor

rect

item

s

CLIL

Non-CLIL

Although we find differences in favour of CLIL students, these were found not to be

significant after analysing them statistically. As the results of Mann-Whitney U test applied to

the means gave us the following values6 as regards VLT200 (U = 603,500 z = ,384), and

VLT300 (U = 690,000 z = ,973). The Kolmogorov-Smirnov for contrasting two samples was

also applied to the data to search for significance, again non-significant differences were

found between CLIL and non-CLIL students concerning their results on VLT2000 due to the

high values (t = ,646) and VLT3000 (t = ,927).

6 The Kolmogorov-Smirnov-Lilliefors Test run for normality testing showed the sample did not have a normal distribution (p<0.05).

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7.4. Relation between students’ attitudes and vocabulary outcomes

We are now presenting evidence for the relationship between students’ attitudes towards

English language and vocabulary outcomes as measured by VLT2000 and VLT300. In this

regard, there is a positive correlation (Spearman test) between attitudes and scoring in each

VLT frequency band, and this correlation applies to all students, that is, those who had contact

with CLIL and those who did not. .

The results tell us that there is a significant increasing relationship between students’ attitudes

towards English and their vocabulary performance. The values obtained were as follows:

r=0.420, p<,000 for VLT2000, and r= 0.349, p<,001 for VLT3000. The significant correlation

suggests that the better the attitudes towards English the better the performance on the two

bands analysed from VLT test. It does not matter if the students have received any kind of

CLIL instruction or not.

The p-values (,000 in VLT 2000 and ,001 in VLT 3000) are less than 0,05, which indicates

that the relation between attitudes and outcomes is significantly different. Furthermore the r-

values higher than 0,00 (,420 for VLT 2000 and ,349 for VLT 3000) indicate that this is an

increasing relation: the higher the score in motivation, the better the results in VLT 2000 and

VLT 3000.

7.5. Teachers

Personal interviews with the teachers provided us with a first hand perspective on how CLIL

is being implemented in a given school as well s on teachers’ views on CLIL. In this section

we present a brief summary of the main topics covered during the guided interviews. For the

sake of clarity we group the topics into five categories: (a) Professional profiles; (b)

Motivation towards English and CLIL; (c) Implementation of CLIL in the classroom; (d)

Perceptions on CLIL and its effectiveness; (e) Main problems and difficulties in CLIL

implementation.

(a) Teachers’ professional profiles

As stated in the Method section our sample consists of five teachers: two EFL teachers and

three CLIL teachers. The former are two female EFL teachers who hold a university degree in

English Studies. They have more than 30 years of experience as English language teachers in

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a wide variety of educational levels: primary education, secondary education, baccalaureate,

and Professional Courses. As to the CLIL teachers, their profiles are not as homogeneous as

the EFL teachers’; the CLIL group is set up by three male teachers whose teaching

experiences range from 6 to 17 and 18 years respectively in all educational levels, from

primary education to university. The subjects taught in English are Maths, Physical Education

and Religion. The three teachers are in possession of a university degree in their own

specialities. And as far as CLIL experience is concerned, the three teachers have been using

this methodology for the last three years (from 2007-2008 to 2009-2010) in the subjects they

teach.

Regarding English, one of them (the Religion teacher) holds an English Studies degree,

whereas, at the time of the interview, the remaining two had completed 3 courses from the

local Escuela Oficial de Idiomas (Official Languages School), which certifies their

intermediate English level, corresponding to a B1 for the Common European Framework of

Reference.

(b) Motivation towards English and CLIL

CLIL Teachers coincided in their replies concerning their motivation towards English. The

three teachers replied that they used English to teach their subjects due to the importance of

this language as a lingua franca in nowadays society; another reason was that they wanted to

transmit this idea to their pupils. As to their motivation towards CLIL, the three teachers said

that they adopted this methodology out of personal interest; nevertheless one of them also said

that he did for the school’s reputation sake.

Teachers remarked the skills they want their pupils to improve, the materials they use in the

class, or how is the collaboration among content teachers and English language teachers. As to

the skills they want their pupils to improve, the three CLIL teachers and the English as a

subject teachers share the same view: oral skills –listening and speaking- leaving aside writing

and reading. What is more, the five of them try to enhance their students’ fluency and

vocabulary. However, the latter was only highlighted by one teacher.

(c) Implementation of CLIL

Concerning how CLIL is put into practice, some tendencies emerged from the interviews and

they are summarised as follows: English is used by CLIL teachers to teach Mathematics,

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Physical Education, and Religion; however CLIL is differently approached in every subject

since it is used in one third of the course in Mathematics, in two didactic units in Religion and

randomly used in some lessons in Physical Education. Although every teacher has a different

approach, they all share the idea about not increasing or decreasing the amount of hours in

which they use English to teach their subjects.

These CLIL teachers have been using this approach for three years and during this time they

have implemented some changes in topics, activities, and the distribution of CLIL hours

throughout the course. Activities, as teachers said, have been changing from the first time they

became involved in CLIL. Regarding the type of activities accomplished in class, and

according to teachers’ replies they range from discussions, correction of exercises, playing

games, reading aloud, and some grammar-focused activities like rephrasing or translating.

Teaching materials are a controversial issue in the implementation of CLIL as shown by the

different opinions and perspectives teachers hold. Each teacher had its own approach to

teaching materials; for example, one used no teaching materials at all, while the others used a

textbook and a course guide self-elaborated, as well as summaries from books and personal

notes. Teachers also informed us that although some materials are available, they have to

prepare most of the material –lectures, activities, examples… - they use in class by

themselves. In order to do so, they have to search for materials either on the Internet or in

books.

Also as a part of the CLIL implementation, we asked teachers about their collaboration with

English language expert teachers and the results are, again, divergent. One of them maintained

that the collaboration was positive whereas, the two remaining teachers considered that there

was no collaboration, mainly because it was not necessary.

Students’ participation in a CLIL programme was another point addressed in the interview; in

this case, when teachers were asked about the selection of the students taking part in the CLIL

class, the answer was the same: ‘No selection is made’.

(d) Perceptions on CLIL and its effectiveness

Teachers believe that students show positive attitudes towards CLIL and that CLIL helps them

to improve their oral comprehension and speaking skills, as well as to increase their

vocabulary. In addition, teachers think that CLIL also affects students’ attitudes and

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motivation towards other languages in general and towards English in particular in a positive

way.

According to teachers, CLIL does not affect the amount of content of the subject; however for

two teachers the amount of content would decrease in a definite manner in case they taught

their subjects exclusively in English.

We also asked them about their personal opinion about CLIL and about the changes that it

may undergo in the future. Their opinions on CLIL are somewhat shared: they all consider

that CLIL is a very good methodology and the passing of time will bring more CLIL hours

and subjects, what will affect students positively. However, on their view, two main things are

needed, namely more support for teachers –by lightening their workload or by offering a

wider range of courses both on language and on teaching methodology-, and better linguistic

competences on the part of students.

On the other hand, we decided to interview EFL teachers as to obtain a round picture on CLIL

in this school: as experts on English language and teachers of English of students involved in

CLIL they would be in an ideal position to assess students’ gains in English. As it was

mentioned above, two female English experts are in charge of teaching English as a subject all

through the four courses in secondary education. One teacher teaches English to all students in

the 1st and 2nd year in Secondary Education and the other one teaches in the 3rd and the 4th year

in Secondary Education. Both teachers have different opinions on CLIL and its effect on

students. However, they agree upon the skills that are most positively affected by CLIL, i.e.

speaking and listening, and they also share the view that CLIL (i) fosters students’ vocabulary;

(ii) develops positive attitudes towards other languages; (iii) improves students’ oral

expression and comprehension as well as their fluency and pronunciation. They confirmed

that the influence of CLIL is shown positively or very positively in students’ marks.

Nevertheless, when asked about the future of CLIL the two teachers remained sceptical and

said that –in this school- “CLIL will remain as it is”. In their opinion, it is hard to achieve

better results due to the vast diversity of students and this situation could only be changed if

students were divided into smaller groups and also if greater economic support could be

received from the national Government as well as from regional/local administrations.

Nevertheless, one teacher remarked that CLIL is an excellent initiative as long as it is optional

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for students and she thought those CLIL hours will remain increasing, although achieving

bilingualism seems to be a chimera.

(e) Main problems and difficulties in CLIL implementation

Up to now we have taken a look at CLIL teachers’ motivation and professional profiles and

also at the implementation of CLIL in the school. However no word has been said about the

difficulties, problems, or necessities that arise in a CLIL school. In this respect and according

to the teachers of the school analysed, the main difficulties are firstly the scarcity of adequate

teaching materials, secondly the lack of help from Government and other administrations –

which on their view such help is restricted to some language courses-, and finally although

there is no agreement here, linguistic difficulties related to students’ poor competence. In

order to solve these problems, on the one hand, they adapt the materials and, on the other, they

make use of different strategies such as making use of audiovisual support, repeating

explanations, rephrasing, and finally, translating if none of the former strategies was

successful. Teachers feel rather pessimist as in their opinion, there is little they can do in order

to change Government’s support.

7.6. Discussion

The results of our study provide us with different kinds of evidence on varied issues like

students’ motivation towards English, the influence of CLIL in learners’ receptive vocabulary

or the perceptions that teachers and students have on CLIL. We are trying to provide a valid

interpretation to these results.

Concerning students’ motivation, our results suggest that although EFL and CLIL students get

similar scores, students receiving some kind of CLIL instruction show better attitudes towards

English as compared to those students that are not involved in content teaching. Nevertheless,

our findings are not limited to this fact because as it was explained in the previous chapter,

there is a strong link between motivation and achievement since the more motivated students

are also the ones that obtained the highest scores regardless of their instruction.

Our results seem to match those attained by Pérez (2006) and Sevim Inal and Saracaloglu

(2007) where these scholars stress the importance of the positive relationship that binds

motivation to achievement. However, there is one main difference if we are to compare these

studies with ours: the age of informants. Whereas our informants are in the last year of the

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secondary education, i.e. 15 to 16 years, their informants were already university students, so

they were at least 18 years old by the time their studies were being carried out. We have

therefore a difference in age but we have a similarity in the motivation-achievement

relationship. This leads us to think that the influence that motivation has on achievement

might remain at least stable throughout different educational stages, as we have seen.

Let us now focus solely on motivation, leaving aside the influence it may have on

achievement. By doing so we mean to fulfil one of the initial objectives of our study and to

answer at the same time one of our research questions: Does CLIL affects students’

motivation?

Other studies make clear that students from primary levels (Karahan 2007, Yassin et al. 2009),

through to secondary levels (Lasagabaster and Sierra 2009) and university students (González

Ardeo 2003, Savignon and Wang 2003, Mohideen Obeidat 2005, Delfín de Manzanilla 2007,

Lennartsson 2008, Verma 2008, Dalton-Puffer el al. 2009) have positive attitudes, due to

different and varied internal and external factors, towards other languages which are not their

mother tongues, and our results appear to be in line with them, since our informants from each

of the 4 courses of our school presented high scores on average when they were asked to

evaluate English.

Very similar to our study is the one conducted by Lasagabaster and Sierra because their

informants are the same age as ours and both of us measured students’ attitudes towards

English by means of the same question (item 15 in questionnaire attached) therefore we can

establish an interesting comparison with their study. We compared our informants’ attitudes

with the mentioned study and we realized that, opposed to our study, in Lasagabaster and

Sierra’s study CLIL groups, i.e. SE 3 and SE 4, had significantly better attitudes than EFL

groups; this might be possibly due to a greater amount of exposure to English in favour of

their informants. We do not think that the socioeconomic context of the informants in each of

the studies can make a big difference because the cities where both questionnaires were

administered on areas in the North of Spain and not far from each other. Nevertheless it is

very important from out point of view noting that there is a great difference between the

cultural contexts: English is L2 for our informants whereas English is L3 for Lasagabaster and

Sierra’s informants. It implies that their informants live in a multilingual community and they

might have developed more positive attitudes towards languages than our informants.

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In addition, although the amount of hours of exposure to English is not made clear in

Lasagabaster and Sierra’s study, we tend to think that their informants might have received a

greater exposure. According to previous studies (Sylvén 2006 and 2010) a greater amount of

exposure to the foreign language has a positive influence on the learner’s attitude towards it.

Moving on to students’ performance and to the influence that CLIL might have on these,

results throw some light on this issue and these results help us to answer the research question

about the increase of vocabulary size in CLIL students. First of all, although we have seen that

it was not significant, CLIL –among other possible individual factors which we did not study-

seems to have a positive influence on learners’ vocabulary since the CLIL group performed

slightly better than the EFL group.

This fact seems to be completely logical if we take into account that in its theoretical

foundations CLIL is addressed to foster primarily, among others, students’ linguistic skills.

However our CLIL informants did not perform significantly better than non-CLILs and the

answer to this striking difference may rely on the actual implementation of CLIL in this

school, which appears to be a poor implementation if we look at the amount of hours taught in

English and we compare it to the CLIL hours in other studies (see Ruiz de Zarobe and

Jiménez Catalán 2009)

Furthermore our results do not seem to match other similar studies focused on the

effectiveness of CLIL since other scholars have proved that CLIL can make a significant

difference between students who are involved in CLIL and students who are not. For instance

in Ruiz de Zarobe and Jiménez Catalán eds. 2009, we see that in most studies the CLIL group

outperforms the control group; besides it is to be specially highlighted the study by Jiménez

Catalán and Ruiz de Zarobe 2009 on receptive vocabulary in which CLIL students perform

significantly better and they also have a greater vocabulary because there are several

similarities between both studies, like the measuring tools, the context, or the age of the

informants, and their results are much more significant than ours.

Nevertheless, we have found similarities with at least one study (Miralpeix 2007) where the

author devotes her study to test if a greater exposure to English entails better results.

According to this study the CLIL group, which had received 74 extra hours of exposure to

English, and the EFL group performed similarly, that is why she concludes that more

emphasis should be put on the quality of the input.

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These differences and similarities in findings lead us to one main possible interpretation. Both

sides seem to be right to a certain extent. In our opinion, these studies have demonstrated that

the amount of hours and the quality of the input given to students are both of capital

importance. However in the context of our study and focusing our attention in the acquisition

of vocabulary, we are inclined to give more importance to the amount of hours because we

agree with Jiménez Catalán and Ruiz de Zarobe (2009) when they say that CLIL appears to be

an effective teaching methodology although the differences in students’ performance might

rely on the greater exposure to English that CLIL students have.

Nevertheless, it is important no to forget that CLIL is still in a preliminary stage in La Rioja,

let alone the school of our study, therefore we think that, for the moment, a greater emphasis

should be put on the amount of hours while CLIL undergoes a global process of

standardization. After carrying out our study and exploring other studies we have noticed that

the implementation of this methodology is somewhat irregular in the school under study.

To find how is CLIL being implemented we asked the content teachers how do they apply this

methodology, and the obtained results provided us with a picture that allows us to interpret the

actual CLIL implementation.

Firstly, we found that CLIL is being implemented without following any given pattern, that is,

teachers work very independently and they have different approaches when it comes to

teaching in English, and secondly the CLIL hours vary considerably among teachers, being

from our point of view scarce in all cases in order to achieve relevant results in students’

linguistic skills.

However, as we saw in the results section, all three teachers aim at enhancing their students’

oral skills, i.e. speaking and listening, and students’ perceptions support this view since the

majority of our informants pointed at listening as the skill that has improved the most, closely

followed by speaking.

Leaving aside the fact that CLIL implementation may not be systematic, the coincidence in

teachers and students’ perceptions regarding the linguistic skills that have been improved lead

us to think about an interpretation for the results obtained in the two VLT: Teachers and

students feel that CLIL boosts their listening and speaking skills, thus the differences in

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achievement between CLILs and non-CLILs should be notable in these skills but not

necessarily in vocabulary.

Finally, in order to close this section we observed the main problems, and difficulties that

teachers must face when they get involved in teaching through English.

According to teachers the main problem they face is the lack of appropriate teaching materials

but they also complain about the lack of courses that Government offers. This may be due to

the early stage of CLIL in La Rioja; it is seen, according to the English teachers of our sample,

as a good initiative that needs some time to develop and to give notable results. The opinions

of these professionals in the education field did not seem to be completely convinced about

the effectiveness of CLIL and it allows us to think that there can be a sceptical vision on

behalf of the Government, together with other possible causes, such as economical reasons.

These teachers’ perceptions go hand in hand with the main difficulties listed by the European

study (Eurydice, 2006) mentioned in the introduction to this study, that is the lack of

appropriate teaching material, the lack of trained professionals, and the lack of investment.

The possible reasons to give an explanation to these difficulties are of different nature. To

begin with, the lack of materials can be attributed to the early stages that CLIL is in; we must

bear in mind that the North American immersion programmes in the eighties are predecessors

of nowadays CLIL; we mean that a greater period of time is needed for the creation of more

materials and more specific. Secondly, the lack of trained professionals according to Eurydice

2006 seems to be connected to the lack of courses focused on CLIL that teachers in our study

demand: we understand that there can be no specialist teachers without specialist courses.

8. Conclusion

By means of a series of tests, questionnaires, and interviews we have tried to provide a bird’s-

eye view on a whole single CLIL secondary Spanish school, something that had not been done

previously as far as we are concerned. We have done that by presenting students and teachers’

perceptions on CLIL, students’ results on different vocabulary level tests, and also by

summarising how teachers are implementing CLIL in their classes.

We have tried to fulfil three main objectives and in order to do that we proposed some

research questions, which we think, have been answered. Results have proved on one hand

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that CLIL seems to have a positive effect on students, as it was expected. However these

interpretations should be taken with extreme care because statistical tests affirmed that the

positive differences in favour of CLIL students were not significant.

On the other hand results showed that although different teachers have different approaches to

CLIL, teachers and students’ perceptions match up when it comes to the linguistic skills that

students are supposed to have improved after having been involved in a CLIL context.

In addition to teachers’ opinions we find the fact of the actual implementation of CLIL in the

classroom. To this respect, we have shown that this implementation at this very specific

school is rather irregular because there is not any guide or pattern to be followed by teachers

and there is no agreement between them on how to apply this methodology in their classes.

These interpretations should be cautiously taken into account due to the, to some extent,

pioneer character of the work and, also due to this character of the study, there is room for

further studies which aim at investigating and helping to improve CLIL. Results show the

need for further studies devoted to research in depth how extramural exposure affects learners

compared to CLIL exposure. Together with the influence of exposure to the language outside

the class, the influence of the amount of exposure hours needs also to be studied.

The results that we obtained also lead us to think that further research is required comparing

the amount of hours of exposure to the quality of exposure to the language in order to find out

which of these is more relevant for students’ better linguistic achievement.

In order to close this dissertation we must make reference to the implications that this study

might have for teachers. In the first place, from our point of view, it is obvious that Spanish

students need a higher competence in English if CLIL is meant to be successful and this task

relies on many different bodies, ranging from Government to each of the language teachers,

who should do their utmost in order to help students to achieve a higher competence.

Regarding CLIL teachers, they should try and follow at least a similar pattern of CLIL

teaching which would help them in a definite manner, as well as students.

Besides we have learnt that attitudes towards languages have a significantly positive influence

on students’ achievement; therefore, teachers should really put a great emphasis on trying to

enhance their pupils’ motivation and attitudes, in this case towards English.

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Finally, regarding the difficulties and problems that teachers face when implementing CLIL in

their classes, we think that a greater effort on the part of local, national, and international

educational and governing bodies is necessary because more specialists are needed in order to

make CLIL a more effective methodology.

Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to every member of the school that allowed us to elicit data for the

present dissertation. Particularly, we would like to thank both teachers and students for their

collaboration.

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Appendix i: VLT 2000 CENTRO____________________________________________________________ CURSO_____________________________________________FECHA__________ APELLIDOS, NOMBRE _________________________________ _____________________

Este es un test de vocabulario. En la parte izquierda te presentamos grupos de seis palabras inglesas

y a su derecha, los significados de sólo tres de ellas. Escribe junto a éstos, el número de la palabra inglesa correspondiente a dichos significados. Observa el siguiente ejemplo:

1 coffee 2 disease _____ money for work 3 justice _____ a piece of clothing 4 skirt _____ using the law in the right way 5 stage 6 wage 1 choice 2 crop _____ heat 3 flesh _____ meat 4 salary _____ money paid regularly for

doing a job 5 secret 6 temperature 1 cap 2 education _____ teaching and learning 3 journey _____ numbers to measure with 4 parent _____ going to a far place 5 scale 6 trick 1 attack 2 charm _____ gold and silver 3 lack _____ pleasing quality 4 pen _____ not having something 5 shadow 6 treasure 1 cream 2 factory _____ part of milk 3 nail _____ a lot of money 4 pupil _____ person who is studying 5 sacrifice 6 wealth

1 adopt 2 climb _____ go up 3 examine _____ look at closely 4 pour _____ be on every side 5 satisfy 6 surround 1 bake 2 connect _____ join together 3 inquire _____ walk without purpose 4 limit _____ keep within a certain size 5 recognize 6 wander 1 burst 2 concern _____ break open 3 deliver _____ make better 4 fold _____ take something to someone 5 improve 6 urge 1 original 2 private _____ first 3 royal _____ not public 4 slow _____ all added together 5 sorry 6 total 1 ancient 2 curious _____ not easy 3 difficult _____ very old 4 entire _____ related to God 5 holy 6 social

EJEMPLO

1 business 2 clock ____ part of a house 3 horse ____ animal with 4 legs 4 pencil ____ something used for writing 5 shoe

RESPUESTA CORRECTA

1 business 2 clock __6__ part of a house 3 horse __3__ animal with 4 legs 4 pencil __4__ something used for writing 5 shoe

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Appendix ii: VLT 3000

CENTRO _________________________________________________________________ CURSO_____________________________________________FECHA________________ APELLIDOS, NOMBRE _________________________________ _____________________

Este es un test de vocabulario. En la parte izquierda te presentamos grupos de seis palabras inglesas

y a su derecha, los significados de sólo tres de ellas. Escribe junto a éstos, el número de la palabra

inglesa correspondiente a dichos significados. Observa el siguiente ejemplo:

1 bull 1 muscle 2 champion _____ formal and serious manner 2 counsel _____ advice 3 dignity _____ winner of a sporting event 3 factor _____ a place covered with grass 4 hell _____ building where valuable objects 4 hen _____ female chicken 5 museum are shown 5 lawn 6 solution 6 atmosphere 1 blanket 1 abandon 2 contest _____ holiday 2 dwell _____ live in a place 3 generation _____ good quality 3 oblige _____ follow in order to catch 4 merit _____ wool covering used on beds 4 pursue _____ leave something

permanently 5 plot 5 quote 6 vacation 6 resolve 1 comment 1 assemble 2 gown _____ long formal dress 2 attach _____ look closely 3 import _____ goods from a foreign country 3 peer _____ stop doing something 4 nerve _____ part of the body which carries 4 quit _____ cry out loudly in fear 5 pasture feeling 5 scream 6 tradition 6 toss 1 pond 1 drift 2 angel _____ group of animals 2 endure _____ suffer patiently 3 frost _____ spirit who served God 3 grasp_____ join wool threads together 4 herd _____ managing business and affairs 4 knit _____ hold firmly with your hands 5 fort 5 register 6 administration 6 tumble 1 brilliant 1 aware 2 distinct _____ thin 2 blank _____ usual 3 magic _____ steady 3 desperate _____ best or most important 4 naked _____ without clothes 4 normal ___ knowing what is happening 5 slender 5 striking 6 stable 6 supreme

EJEMPLO

1 business 2 clock ____ part of a house 3 horse ____ animal with 4 legs 4 pencil ____ something used for writing 5 shoe

RESPUESTA CORRECTA

1 business 2 clock __6__ part of a house 3 horse __3__ animal with 4 legs 4 pencil __4__ something used for writing 5 shoe

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Appendix iii: Questionnaire completed by students CENTRO______________________________________________________________ CURSO______________________________FECHA__________________________ APELLIDOS ________________________________NOMBRE__________________ Maca con una “X” la respuesta que corresponda: 1. Sexo □ Hombre □ Mujer 2. Nacionalidad □ Española □ Otras. Especifica cual: ___________________________ 3. Lengua materna □ Española □ Otras. Especifica cual: ___________________________ 4. ¿Conoces otras lenguas además de inglés y español? □ No □ Sí - ¿Cuál o cuáles? Especifica: _______________________________________________ - ¿Cómo calificarías tu conocimiento global en esas lenguas? Lengua: _____________________ - Hablar y escribir en esa lengua: □ Excelente □ Muy bueno □ Bueno □ Regular □ Malo - Leer y escuchar esa lengua: □ Excelente □ Muy bueno □ Bueno □ Regular □ Malo Lengua:______________________ - Hablar y escribir en esa lengua: □ Excelente □ Muy bueno □ Bueno □ Regular □ Malo - Leer y escuchar esa lengua: □ Excelente □ Muy bueno □ Bueno □ Regular □ Malo 5. ¿Recibes clases particulares de inglés fuera del colegio? □ Sí □ No □ He ido, pero ya no voy

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6. En caso de que hayas recibido clases de inglés fuera del colegio, especifica:

� Durante cuántos años:

□ Menos de un año □ Un año □ Dos años □ Tres años □ Cuatro años □ Cinco años □ Más de cinco años

� Durante cuántas horas a la semana:

□ 1 hora □ 2 horas □ 3 horas □ 4 horas □ 5 horas □ Más de 5 horas

� Cuál ha sido el motivo:

□ Había suspendido y quería aprobar. □ Sacaba buenas notas en el colegio pero quería mejorar. □ Me gustan mucho los idiomas y me divierte aprenderlos. □ Complacer a mi familia. 7. ¿Has estado en algún país de habla inglesa o en campamentos o colonias de inglés? □ No □ Sí - ¿Cuándo? _______________________________________________________ - ¿Durante cuánto tiempo? ___________________________________________ - ¿Has ido a clases de inglés allí?______________________________________ 8. ¿Cuál fue tu nota de inglés el año pasado? ______________________________________________________________________ 9. ¿Has recibido clases en inglés de alguna otra asignatura que no sea inglés? □ No □ Sí

� ¿Qué asignaturas?__________________________________________________ � ¿Cuántas horas a la semana?_________________________________________ � ¿Durante cuántos años?_____________________________________________

10. ¿Crees que estudiar otras asignaturas en inglés te ha ayudado a mejorar en inglés? □ Nada □ Muy poco □ Poco □ Bastante □ Mucho 11. ¿En qué te ha ayudado estudiar otras asignaturas en inglés? □ Entender inglés escrito □ Entender inglés hablado □ Escribir en inglés □ Hablar en inglés □ Otras:_______________________________________ 12. Marca con una “X” la frecuencia con la que realices las siguientes actividades en las asignaturas que estudies en inglés (sin contar las clases de inglés).

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- Completo esquemas en inglés: □ Nunca □ Muy poco □ Poco □ Bastante □ Mucho - Leo textos en inglés: □ Nunca □ Muy poco □ Poco □ Bastante □ Mucho - Hago resúmenes en inglés: □ Nunca □ Muy poco □ Poco □ Bastante □ Mucho - Veo películas en inglés □ Nunca □ Muy poco □ Poco □ Bastante □ Mucho - Participo en discusiones en inglés: □ Nunca □ Muy poco □ Poco □ Bastante □ Mucho - Escucho explicaciones en inglés: □ Nunca □ Muy poco □ Poco □ Bastante □ Mucho 13. ¿Cómo describirías tu nivel de inglés? □ Muy bueno □ Bueno □ Regular □ Malo 14. ¿Cuánto tiempo le dedicas cada día al inglés en casa (sin contar las clases que recibas)? □ Menos de media hora □ Entre media hora y una hora □ Entre una y dos horas □ Más de dos horas. Especifica:_______________ 15. Pon una “X” en la casilla que corresponda de entre las siete que te presentamos, incluida la sombreada (La casilla sombreada te guía para que identifiques el término medio las opciones presentadas). Aprender inglés es: Necesario Innecesario

Feo Bonito

Difícil Fácil

Atractivo No atractivo

Agradable Desagradable

Poco importante

Importante

Inútil Útil

Interesante Aburrido

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Appendix iv: Guide for interviewing teachers

- Sexo: Masculino / Femenino Edad: - Años de experiencia docente: ¿En qué niveles?: Primaria, ESO, Bachiller, FP - Por qué trabajas el aprendizaje integrado:

Interés personal, petición del centro, sustitución, otras:…… - ¿En qué asignaturas utilizas el inglés?

Matemáticas, música, historia, educación física, religión, CCNN, tecnología,… - ¿Cuántas horas a la semana?

1, 2, 3, 4, …… - Trabajas el aprendizaje integrado durante

Todo el curso, un trimestre, un mes, dos semanas por curso, una semana por curso, algunas lecciones, días sueltos, otras:……………….

- ¿Te gustaría ampliar o reducir el número de horas lectivas en inglés? Ampliar, reducir, suprimir, sin cambios.

- ¿Cuánto tiempo has estado trabajando con CLIL en el centro o en otro centro? Un curso, dos cursos, tres cursos, otro:…………………

- ¿Qué ha cambiado desde el primer año? Asignatura, temas, actividades, dedicación de tiempo: más o menos horas dedicadas a la asignatura, materiales: cuáles

- ¿Qué tipo de actividades realizáis en inglés? Lecturas de textos en inglés Explicaciones gramaticales Discusiones en parejas Debates en grupos Listenings sobre temas de la asignatura Role plays Juegos Presentaciones mediante PPT u otros medios audiovisuales Utilizamos gráficos Utilizamos páginas web Elaboramos webquests

- ¿Qué destrezas lingüísticas pretendes que mejoren los alumnos? (Writing, listening, speaking, Reading, text comprehension,…)

- ¿Qué aspectos del inglés pretendes que mejoren los alumnos? Gramática, vocabulario, pronunciación, fluidez expresiva, conocimiento de la cultura de la lengua inglesa, otros:…………..

- ¿Qué materiales utilizas para el aprendizaje integrado? Audiovisuales: grabaciones, videos de internet sobre aspectos gramaticales, películas, sketches, wallcharts, pictures, photographs, otros:….... Libro de texto en español que traduces al inglés. Libro de texto publicado en inglés.

- ¿Utilizáis libros de texto en inglés o tenéis otro tipo de materiales más independientes (lecturas sueltas, vídeos, ejercicios,…)?

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Fotocopias de otros libros de texto Enciclopedias en inglés Readers (libritos de lectura seriados) Material impreso auténtico: cuál? Diccionarios bilingües (impresos o online?) Diccionarios monolingües

- ¿Lo preparas tú o hay materiales ya preparados? - Si preparas tú el material: ¿Qué tipo de material? Ejemplo de material que

preparas, ¿ Temas?

- ¿Es difícil encontrar este tipo de materiales? Por qué? ¿Qué material no se encuentra y te haría falta?

- ¿Qué fuentes utilizas para encontrar material en inglés?

Internet, biblioteca del centro, centro de Profesores,… Otras bibliotecas: cuáles

- ¿Encuentras dificultades al dar la clase en inglés? En caso de que haya: Lengua, falta de materiales, problemas lingüísticos por parte de los alumnos, problemas de

motivación por parte de los alumnos…

- ¿Cuál es la respuesta de los alumnos al aprendizaje integrado? Muy positiva, positiva, indiferente, negativa, ………….

- ¿Crees que los alumnos encuentran más motivación para aprender inglés? Bastante, poco, mucho, nada, ….

- ¿En qué medida crees que el CLIL-AICLE ayuda a los alumnos? Aprenden más vocabulario Aprenden más gramática Mejoran su comprensión oral Mejoraran su expresión oral Mejoran su expresión escrita Mejoran su compresión escrita Mejoran su actitud hacia el inglés Mejoran su motivación hacia las lenguas Otras:……………….

- ¿Se aprecia alguna evolución en las calificaciones de los alumnos? ¿En inglés y la materia que impartes, sólo en una de ellas o en ninguna?

Positiva: obtienen mejores calificaciones en inglés Negativa: obtienen peores calificaciones en inglés No hay variación entre alumnos que reciben CLIL y los que no.

Otra evolución:……..

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- ¿Crees que el CLIL favorece el aprendizaje de un idioma a cambio de ralentizar el aprendizaje de otra materia o el aprendizaje es el mismo en ambas asignaturas? ¿Por qué?

- ¿Cuál es tu preparación lingüística en inglés? (Cambridge, Trinity, E.O.I., otros certificados) Nivel: B1, 2, C1, C2, Intermediate, Advanced, First Certificate, Proficiency, Título EOI, licenciatura en Inglés, magisterio en Inglés, otros títulos:……………………………..

- ¿Qué criterios se siguen para decidir con qué grupos trabajar en inglés? Los alumnos son seleccionados en base a sus notas en inglés Es un programa voluntario: hay alumnos que no optan por CLIL No hay ningún criterio establecido: todos los alumnos reciben CLIL Otros:……………………

- ¿Cómo solucionas posibles problemas lingüísticos por parte de los alumnos? Explicaciones en español intercaladas con inglés, apoyo visual y de otros recursos para que comprendan mejor, abandonar el CLIL, …

- ¿Qué es lo que te motiva para trabajar en inglés?

- ¿Cómo ves el aprendizaje integrado en el centro dentro de unos años?

- ¿Cómo es la relación y colaboración con otros profesores que trabajen también el aprendizaje integrado? Muy positiva Positiva Regular Indiferente Negativa ¿Por qué?:

- ¿Recibís ayuda o apoyo de algún tipo por parte de algún organismo (gobierno, MEC…) con el CLIL-AICLE?

- ¿Qué tipo de apoyo? Cursos en país de habla inglesa, en La Rioja, méritos para concurso de traslado o de otro tipo, reconocimiento de algún modo: promoción?

- ¿Qué se podría cambiar para mejorar esta situación?

Materiales, TIC, apoyo por parte de otras instituciones, cursos para profesores,…

- Opinión personal sobre CLIL