Vocabulary in CLIL and in Mainstream Education

Abstract

The focus of the study reported in this article was vocabulary size attained in two learning environments, i.e. in regular mainstream instruction and in CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning). Receptive and productive vocabulary sizes of sixth-graders from both environments were compared with the respective vocabulary sizes of corresponding ninth-graders using the Vocabulary Levels Test and the Productive Vocabulary Levels Test. It was hypothesized that CLIL would produce larger vocabularies, as it offers learners more extensive and versatile exposure to the target language. This turned out to be the case, as did the previously attested phenomenon that receptive vocabularies are larger than productive vocabularies. However, the development of the productive-receptive ratio was not uniform across the frequency levels, even though it was at its highest at the third frequency band (3000 most common English words).