The Pragmatic Competence of CLIL Students across Different Educational Levels in Secondary Stage: The Case of Requests

Abstract

This study compares the requests of secondary school learners (12 to 16 years old) in four different levels of compulsory education in a CLIL program (Content and Language Integrated Learning). The study explores whether the degree of directness of their requests and their use of external and internal modifiers differ from one educational level to the other. A total of 228 students participated in the study. They produced a total of 399 requests which were elicited by means of a written discourse completion task. The requests were analyzed using a data-driven taxonomy, informed by earlier ones (Blum-Kulka et al, 1989; Alcon-Soler et al, 2005). Qualitative and quantitative data showed that the oldest group of the four CLIL levels has access to a wider repertoire of request modification devices and strategies, but which do not necessarily guarantee the students’ ability to mitigate requests.