The impact of educational setting : a study of the English passive in German EFL and CLIL learners
(2016)
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- Authors
Möller, Verena 
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- Abstract
- Encouraged by European and national policies, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has been on a steady rise over the past decades. Research results uniformly suggest that CLIL benefits L2 acquisition, even though CLIL strands have frequently been reported to be selective with respect to learner variables such as intelligence and motivation. Combining learner corpus research (LCR) with second language acquisition (SLA) methodologies, the present study analyses how much of the perceived success of CLIL programmes is due to CLIL itself, and how much is triggered by selectivity. In an L2 database compiled for this purpose, we link the Secondary-Level Corpus of Learner English (SCooLE), a learner corpus of about 250,000 tokens, with experimental data and data on more than fifty learner variables collected by means of a learner profile questionnaire and psychometric tests. Being a prime example of the lexis-grammar interface in L2 acquisition, the English passive is the focus of our comparison of data from CLIL and non-CLIL settings. Occurring most frequently in scientific writing, we assume that the passive is more prevalent in CLIL materials, which cover the social and natural sciences, than in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) materials. An analysis of the Teaching Materials Corpus (TeaMC) reveals that this is indeed the case. Moreover, CLIL materials comprise fewer non-central passives, i.e. passives displaying adjectival features. We therefore expect to find both quantitative and qualitative differences in passive constructions produced by CLIL and non-CLIL learners. An analysis conducted in the framework of Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (CIA) reveals that CLIL participants produce a greater number of passives as well as a lower proportion of non-central and erroneous passives, thus making their texts more target-like. By means of multiple regression modelling, we assess the role of CLIL as opposed to its selectivity. Results show that CLIL makes a significant contribution to L2 acquisition, although the selectivity of the system plays a greater part in explaining variability. Experimental data yields similar, but even clearer results. We conclude that, even though CLIL is selective, it is beneficial to the acquisition of the English passive.
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Citations
Möller, V. (2016). The impact of educational setting : a study of the English passive in German EFL and CLIL learners. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/60442