Analysis of accuracy in the writing of EFL students enrolled on CLIL and non-CLIL programmes: the impact of grade and gender

Abstract

This paper examines written language accuracy in a content and language integrated learning (CLIL) and a non-CLIL instruction context including grade and gender in the analysis. Essays written by 393 third and fourth year CLIL and non-CLIL secondary education students were evaluated by two measures of second language (L2) accuracy: error-free sentence ratio and errors per word ratio. Errors were analysed and scored as syntactic, morphological, lexical, lexicogrammatical, spelling and punctuation errors. Results revealed that accuracy progressed with grade significantly in the CLIL instruction context whereas in the non-CLIL group only lexicogrammatical errors decreased significantly. The analysis of error subtypes revealed some cases of regression and stabilisation tendencies, with articles posing problems in both contexts and prepositions, determiners, voice, subordination and word order in the non-CLIL context. As regards gender, female participants did not significantly outperform their male peers in written accuracy in the CLIL group as they did in the non-CLIL group indicating that CLIL may help balance gender differences.

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