Student perception of CLIL: The case of Andalucía

Abstract

This study aims to make a large-scale evaluation of the student perception of CLIL in Andalucía. To this purpose, 58 CLIL schools (29 primary and 29 secondary schools) were selected by stratified random sampling, controlling for socioeconomic status and geographical distribution in the region of Andalucía. All of them were English CLIL schools. The students in the final year of each school (N= 2104) were surveyed.

The survey, which was in Spanish, consisted of close-ended questions addressing CLIL methodology, L2 use, and extracurricular school activities. Questions covered how often students did certain activities in class, which were their favourite ones, how often and for which purpose they used the L2 during content classes, what extracurricular activities were offered in their schools and whether they thought that learning through an L2 was affecting their content acquisition.

Results show that, even if CLIL students have an overall positive attitude towards the programme, their preferred activities do not match the ones most frequently used in class. They also manifest that there is an imbalance between written and oral L2 use, oral communication playing a secondary role. Furthermore, differences between primary and secondary students’ perception are observed.