Assessing Dutch and English CLIL education in French-speaking Belgium: Linguistic, cognitive and socio-educational perspectives
(2018) Focus on Language — Location: Freiburg (22.March.2018)
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- Although recently published surveys have confirmed that CLIL learners outperform traditional L2 learners as far as target language test scores are concerned, it nonetheless remains largely unclear to what extent, in what respect and thanks to which (internal and external) processes and factors (see Dalton-Puffer, 2011). Therefore, a 5-year multidisciplinary research project in French-speaking Belgium investigates the interplay between linguistic, cognitive and socio-educational aspects of CLIL in Dutch and English (Hiligsmann et al., 2017). This contribution presents preliminary results of a) pupils’ target language competence and b) their cognitive and socio-affective profiles. A large variety of data were gathered from 928 French-speaking CLIL and non-CLIL L2 learners of English (n=401) or Dutch (n=495) during the last two years of primary and secondary school education. Preliminary linguistic analyses of written productions revealed higher target language competence for CLIL learners compared to non-CLIL learners in terms of lexical diversity, intensifying constructions and phraseology. However, no significant differences were found for lexical diversity in the L1 (French). As to pupils’ individual differences, the questionnaires revealed more favourable socio-economic and socio-affective profiles in CLIL compared to non-CLIL. Interestingly, some of the linguistic and socio-affective differences interact with the target language (English/Dutch) and the instruction level (primary/secondary). Finally, the cognitive tasks revealed no overall differences in executive and attentional functions measures between CLIL and non-CLIL learners. To know if the observed differences should be attributed to CLIL or to selection processes remains an open question.
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Bulon, A., De Smet, A., Hendrikx, I., Simonis, M., Galand, B., Hiligsmann, P., Mettewie, L., Meunier, F., Szmalec, A., Van Goethem, K., & Van Mensel, L. (2018). Assessing Dutch and English CLIL education in French-speaking Belgium: Linguistic, cognitive and socio-educational perspectives. Focus on Language, Freiburg. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/237216