The effectiveness of bilingual elementary school programs in comparison with mainstream foreign language programs remains an important research topic (e.g. Wesche 2002; Zaunbauer et al. 2012). For example, more recent research has shown that pupils' foreign language competencies are strongly affected by the overall intensity of a foreign language program and that an intensive mainstream program can be at least as effective as a less intensive CLIL program (cf. Steinlen 2018). Another variable that has recently gained increased attention in studies comparing students attending regular foreign language lessons or CLIL programs is linguistic background. Whereas many children are still learning their first foreign language at school as an L2 because they grow up with only one language (hereafter referred to as majority language children), there is also an increasing number of children who grow up with more than one language and for whom the first foreign language is already an L3 or L4 (cf. Steinlen 2021).
The current study examines the data of more than 400 Bavarian elementary school students who have either attended a German-French CLIL program or a voluntary regular French program in which French is taught for two 45-minute lessons per week. In the CLIL program, the students are taught both in French and in German in subjects such as mathematics, science, physical education, music and art whereas the students who receive two voluntary French lessons per week are taught all school subjects in German. The major goal of the study is to determine which level of competence majority language and minority language students attending either the CLIL program or the regular program can reach in the foreign language French, the majority language German and in mathematics. A second goal is to identify similarities and differences in the minority and the majority language children's development of French from grade 1 until the end of elementary school in grade 4.
In order to examine these research issues, a large test battery including standardized and non-standardized tests as well as questionnaires is employed. The tests examining the children's French skills had to be developed by the research team itself because standardized tests suitable to adequately assess the French skills of the different learner groups compared in the Bavarian school project are not available.
One finding of the study is that whereas majority language students tend to achieve better results in French in the regular program after the first year of learning, minority language students tend to achieve better results in the CLIL program at the end of the second and third year. In other words, the longer the children are exposed to the foreign language, the more the minority language students seem to benefit from the CLIL program. We will not only discuss possible reasons for findings like these, but we will also describe teaching strategies and examples of promising practices suitable to support elementary school students from various linguistic backgrounds in CLIL classes and regular foreign language lessons.
