Analysing a whole CLIL school: Students’ attitudes, motivation, and receptive vocabulary outcomes

Abstract

CLIL keeps on gaining ground in the European educational context, one clear example is Spain, where the number of schools adopting this methodology has kept growing exponentially in recent years. The present study has a dual perspective looking at the motivation of students towards English and CLIL and showing students’ receptive vocabulary outcomes. All students (n=403) enrolled in secondary education in a bilingual school fulfilled a questionnaire and completed two receptive vocabulary level tests (VLT 2k and 3k bands). The findings of the study report on all learners’ opinions and it also correlates vocabulary outcomes from students of the last year of compulsory education (16 years old) with their motivation towards English. Once we analysed the questionnaire and the 2k and 3k versions of the VLT, we concluded that the CLIL group scored higher in receptive vocabulary tests due to their higher motivation, albeit differences were not found statistically significant (Kolmogorov-Smirnov-Lilliefors, Shapiro-Wilk, and Mann-Whitney tests). We attribute this lack of statistical significance to the irregular CLIL implementation in the school and the short experience of the school with this methodology. doi: 10.5294/laclil.2016.9.2.2