Vocabulary Testing in CLIL : The Effect of Incidental Vocabulary Learning in CLIL on the Vocabulary of Learners

Abstract

Denne oppgaven ser på om CLIL elever gjør det bedre på vokabular tester enn elever som bare har vanlig EFL undervisning. Studien bruker en mixed methods metode, hvor intervju, og spørreskjema brukes til å gi et bedre bilde av hvorfor resultatene fra vokabulartestene ble som de ble.

Resultat av vokabulartestene viste at CLIL elevene gjorde det svakere enn EFL elevene. Dette har jeg anaysert og funnet ut at det er særlig to ting som er årsaken til dette. For det første er mengden og kvaliteten på engelskundervisningen for lav, og for det andre så har EFL elevene en del bedre karakterer, som hjelper å forklare hvorfor de har gjort det bedre på testene.

Jeg argumenterer for at kvalilteten på vokabularundervisningen i CLIL må økes, og også at mengden engelsk trenger å bli økt.

The present study examines whether students in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) classes will score better than students receiving only normal EFL classes on vocabulary tests. The study uses a mixed methods design to inspect the vocabulary scores of the students. Included in this mixed-methods design are interviews with the CLIL teachers and CLIL students, a survey and two vocabulary tests, one testing vocabulary breadth, and the other testing productive vocabulary. The sample consisted of four classes from two schools, two CLIL classes, and two EFL classes. The classes were all from the tenth grade, in lower secondary school. The breadth test used was an X-lex test, which uses vocabulary from the 5000 most frequent English words and an additional group of false words to avoid overconfidence in the test-taker. The other vocabulary test consisted of an analysis of 200 word samples from the students looking at type/token ratios. The survey and interviews were used to supplement the vocabulary tests. They were designed to help explain the results of the vocabulary tests, and give a better picture of why the scores came out the way they did. The findings of this study showed that the EFL students scored better on the vocabulary tests than the CLIL students. The survey and interviews managed to reveal some possible explanations to why the CLIL students had not scored better than the EFL students. The small amount of English that was used in the CLIL classes coupled with using Norwegian textbooks helped explain why the CLIL students had done worse than the EFL students. In addition to this, the grades of the EFL students in English were higher, which could also help explain the higher scores of the EFL students. In the discussion I argue that the language portion of CLIL must become more integrated into the subject. Currently the language is seen as a barrier rather than a goal in CLIL. Most importantly I argue that if CLIL is to have any effect on the vocabulary of students both the quality and the quantity of vocabulary related tasks must go up. Also, I strongly suggest the use of good English texts and textbooks, as reading is one of the best and simplest forms of vocabulary learning in CLIL.