Abstract
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has become the focus of Foreign Language (FL) research within the last decades. CLIL provides a more complete, naturalistic, and meaningful context to FL learning, which has proven to brings many benefits to learners, such as a higher motivation and promotion of creativity, and better results in receptive skills, vocabulary, morphology and fluency. Nevertheless, most CLIL research has focused on primary and secondary level students and, thus, more research is needed with younger learners, namely, pre-primary students. The present study examines the learning of FL vocabulary in pre-primary learners following a soft-CLIL program, as compared to their same age peers following Formal Instruction (FI) of English. Over the course of six months, pre-primary students of two grades, namely 4- and 5-year-old students (N=155), took part in such program, aiming at teaching two curricular preschool units, traditionally taught in the mother tongue (L1), in English in the FL sessions. A longitudinal study was conducted, and students were administered a general vocabulary level pre-test, as well as a target words receptive vocabulary post-test after the two units had been worked on. The focus of the research was on receptive vocabulary acquisition, but age and word frequency effects were also analyzed. Results showed positive tendencies in receptive vocabulary development through soft-CLIL, although not statistically significant. A significant frequency effect was found, indicating that high-frequency words are recalled more easily than lower-frequency ones, but no significant differences were found when comparing learners from the two grades.
Highlights
Foreign language (FL) learning research has gained ground in the latest decades, during which age of onset of FL learning in schools has been brought down (Pérez-Vidal, Escobar & Roquet, 2013) and new FL teaching methodologies have been explored and implemented
The present study has examined the effects of a soft-Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) program in receptive vocabulary learning in pre-primary students learning English as a FL
In light of the results abovementioned, which showed positive tendencies in the CLIL groups, no statistically significant differences, it could be stated that such a soft-CLIL program provides a richer context for FL vocabulary learning, with higher quality and quantity input, as well as more interaction opportunities, which could lead to significant results with a longer treatment period
Summary
Foreign language (FL) learning research has gained ground in the latest decades, during which age of onset of FL learning in schools has been brought down (Pérez-Vidal, Escobar & Roquet, 2013) and new FL teaching methodologies have been explored and implemented. That is the case of integrated teaching approaches, such as Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), in which a curricular subject is taught in the FL (Lasagabaster, 2008), providing a more meaningful and natural FL learning context (Artieda, Roquet, & Nicolás-Conesa, 2020; Lasagabaster & Sierra, 2009; Pérez-Vidal, Lorenzo, & Trenchs, 2015). Research has already been conducted to analyze the effects of CLIL programs and benefits have been found in many linguistic and non-linguistic areas (Dalton-Puffer, 2008; Lasagabaster, 2008; Lorenzo, Casal & Moore, 2010; Pérez-Vidal, 2011; Roquet & Pérez-Vidal, 2017). There have been many studies researching the effects of CLIL in different skills and settings, most of such research has been conducted with primary and secondary level students.
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