Abstract
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has recently attracted the attention of practitioners in the language teaching field. As the name suggests, CLIL is an approach built upon teaching content-based area through a language as a medium. For such a language learning process, one of the important language aspects is vocabulary. The number of words language learners know - vocabulary size - and how well they know those words - vocabulary depth - (overall, the receptive dimension of word knowledge) are crucial foci to consider in language learning. Therefore, the primary concern of the present study is to examine the effects of the CLIL approach on the receptive vocabulary knowledge of university students in a state university. Accordingly, Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) by Schmitt, Schmitt and Clapham (2001) and Word Association Test (WAT) by Read (2000) are administered to the participants before and after CLIL treatment. The findings indicated that the subjects’ size of vocabulary knowledge has significantly differed with CLIL instruction in time, which means that CLIL instruction has been found to be successful for developing both general and academic vocabulary knowledge. Similarly, an increase in the depth of vocabulary knowledge of participants alongside with the CLIL instruction has been observed, indicating that participants’ quality of vocabulary knowledge evaluated through WAT seems to have improved with CLIL treatment. Further research including less frequent words as well as the productive aspect of word knowledge might shed light on the impacts of CLIL treatment on vocabulary development of language learners, especially university students.
 
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Highlights
When size and depth aspects were to be compared in order to determine which one was a better indicator of high L2 inferential success, the analysis indicated that the depth aspect of vocabulary knowledge explained a significant amount of the L2 success in terms of lexical inferencing whereas size was not able to make predictions much more on L2 lexical inferencing success significantly than depth
Studies encountered in the literature have been carried out in Spain since Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is a part of their educational system. Apart from that, these studies have generally taken primary and secondary school English as a foreign language (EFL) learners as their participants; research carried out in university settings seems to be another need. Keeping all these in mind, the primary concern of the present study is to examine the effect of the CLIL approach on receptive vocabulary knowledge of fourth-grade university students majoring in the Engineering Department of a state university in Turkey
The primary concern of the present study was to investigate the effect of the CLIL approach on receptive vocabulary knowledge of 4th grade Turkish university students in a state university
Summary
The growing focus on vocabulary, as a result of its importance, has resulted in an increase in the number of theoretical and empirical research conducted since the 2000s (Meara & Olmos, 2010; Rashidi & Khosravi, 2010; Schmitt, Ching & Garras, 2010; Zhou, 2010; Aziez, 2011; Hellman, 2011; Ho & Lien, 2011; Mehrpour, Razmjoo & Kian, 2011; Ehsanzadeh, 2012; Yuksel & Durmusoglu, 2013) These studies have been developed on the structure of words, and most of them have put forward that vocabulary knowledge includes different aspects like receptive and productive (Nation, 2001; Webb, 2005; Zhou, 2010; Yuksel & Durmusoglu, 2013). General vocabulary, high-frequency words which are more widespread in discourse within the 2000th frequency level, has mostly been the main concern (Laufer et al, 2004; Webb, 2005; Zareva, 2005)
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