"Killing Two Birds With One Stone!?" Does Content and Language Integrated Learning Improve Both Students' Language and Content Knowledge?

• In Event: 16.056 - Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: 16.056-12 - Utilizing Home Languages in Content Instruction: Insights From International Contexts

Abstract

Despite its high popularity throughout Europe, the effectiveness of CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) on students’ competence development has not been conclusively attested. Previous studies mostly applied cross-sectional designs and did not consider the CLIL students’ more favourable learning prerequisites. Therefore, the present longitudinal study investigates the competence development of 1806 German CLIL and non-CLIL students in English and History, while controlling for gender, migration background, socio-economic status, cognitive abilities, motivation and quality of instruction. Regarding English, multilevel regression analyses showed that CLIL students made substantially larger progress over one school year than their non-CLIL peers. In History, CLIL and non-CLIL students performed comparably. These results can provide a base for future decisions on the expansion of CLIL programmes.

Authors

• Sara Dallinger, Pädagogische Hochschule Ludwigsburg

• Kathrin Jonkmann, University of Tübingen

• Jan Hollm, Ludwigsburg University of Education