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Article In: Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education: Online-First Articles

The impact of intensity of CLIL programmes and extramural English on primary students’ communicative appropriateness in writing

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Abstract
The present study examines the impact of intensity of CLIL programmes on primary school students’ communicative appropriateness in writing. It also addresses the influence of language exposure beyond the CLIL classroom, considering two out-of-school activities: watching TV and private tuition. A total of 392 primary students from three schools in the Valencian Community participated, representing high-intensity, medium-intensity, and low-intensity CLIL programmes. Data were collected through a written task and a questionnaire adapted from Lasagabaster, D., & Huguet, Á. (2007). Multilingualism in European bilingual context. Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar. The written task was administered during a CLIL science lesson, and data were coded using a rating scale adapted from Kuiker and Vedder (2017) and Jacob et al. (1981). Findings from the study reveal that the intensity of CLIL programmes has an impact on students’ scores in communicative appropriateness in writing. Additionally, the results show that CLIL is beneficial for both language and content learning when high and medium-intensity CLIL programmes are implemented. Moreover, it shows that Extramural English (EE), through watching TV in English and private tuition, benefits CLIL learners, especially those enrolled in low-intensity CLIL programmes. Finally, some pedagogical implications are suggested to enhance learning in CLIL contexts.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Research on CLIL at an early age
    • 2.2CLIL Intensity and Extramural English
    • 2.3CLIL writing and communicative appropriateness
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Instruments, procedure and data analysis
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Author queries
  • References
References (53)
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