Analysing Errors of CLIL and non-CLIL Primary School Students in their Written and Oral Productions: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Abstract This study explores to what extent the density and types of errors made by Primary CLIL students differ from those of non-CLIL learners of the same academic year. With the aim of doing this, two groups of 6 Year of Primary (aged 11-12) students were chosen (both belonging to Bilingual Projects in Madrid, Spain) and two groups of learners of the same year, but who did not follow any type of bilingual programme. Participants completed the Cambridge Key English Test (KET) for schools to determine their proficiency levels. The writing and speaking sections of that exam are used to examine the errors made by these students. A complete error analysis of the spoken and written texts is completed following James’ (1998) criteria and taking into account error density. The results seem to indicate that grammar was the area of English in which learners found more difficulties and that non-CLIL students made significantly more errors than CLIL learners in the oral texts.