This study addresses one of the critical concerns around CLIL: the quality of learning academic content through the L2 and the possible effects on students' subject-specific language competence, both in L2 and L1. To address this issue, we adopted Dalton-Puffer's (2013) construct of cognitive discourse functions (CDFs) which simultaneously targets specific thinking skills, cognitive operations, and their linguistic realizations. Although CDFs are essential for the development of students' disciplinary literacies at school, there is still little empirical research on how they are realized in CLIL classrooms. This study thus aimed to contribute to this research area by examining CLIL learner data in terms of one key CDF (CATEGORIZE), essential for the construction of specialist knowledge (see Mohan, 1986, Lemke, 1990). CATEGORIZE involves acts of categorizing, classifying, comparing, and contrasting facts, objects, phenomena, abstract ideas, and concepts.
To operationalize the selected CDF, we used a conceptual-analytical model of CATEGORIZE and its two sub-functions (CLASSIFY & COMPARE) developed in a previous study (Evnitskaya & Dalton-Puffer, 2020). We also employed Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014) tools to examine learners' grammatical and lexical choices to realize the CDF of Categorize. The data corpus consisted of 15 CLIL students' written productions in L2 English and L1 Spanish on history topics in grades 6, 8, and 10 collected in two bilingual schools (one primary and one secondary school) in the Metropolitan Madrid area, Spain. The corpus was examined through a mixed-methods and longitudinal analysis. The results reveal a low presence of classifications and a high incidence of comparisons. They also show how subject-specific language and cognitive operations (in terms of the CDF of Categorize) are connected: these CLIL students seem to encounter difficulties, both conceptual and linguistic, when forming complete and appropriate classifications and comparisons in both L2 and L1. The results also point to clear subject-specific tendencies in that 'comparing' stands out as a defining figure of thought in history. The study, therefore, contributes to a better understanding of the effects of cognitive maturation in CLIL learners happening between grades 6 and 10. Suggestions are made as to how (language and subject) teachers can contribute to the active development of CLIL students' disciplinary literacies, in this case, in terms of producing written categorizations that are acceptable both in terms of the language and subject-specific content.
References
Dalton-Puffer, C. (2013). A construct of cognitive discourse functions for conceptualising content-language integration in CLIL and multilingual education. European Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1(2), 216–253.
Evnitskaya, N. & Dalton-Puffer, C. (2020). Cognitive discourse functions in CLIL classrooms: Eliciting and analysing students' oral categorizations in science and history. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. [No issue and pages assigned yet].
Halliday, M.A.K., & Matthiessen, C.M.I.M. (2014). An introduction to functional grammar (3rd ed.). Routledge.
Lemke, J.L. (1990). Talking science. Language, learning, and values. Ablex Publishing.
Mohan, B. (1986). Language and content. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
