Multilingual CLIL: are students equally motivated towards all foreign languages?

Enfoque

One of the key arguments for adopting a CLIL approach has been that it fosters language learning motivation. This is largely due to the fact that motivation is known to play a hugely important role in learning a foreign language, and the research that has compared this factor in a CLIL and non-CLIL context has suggested that it may be of even greater importance in a CLIL than a non-CLIL context. However, it is important to note that the majority of research into motivation in CLIL to date has focused on English, largely to the neglect of other important target languages. This means that it is unclear whether results found so far are true only for English, or also for other languages. This has prompted researchers to call for a comparison of CLIL across other languages, in order to better understand the advantages and disadvantages of CLIL language-independently. To this effect, the present talk aims to explore the suggested benefits of the secondary CLIL classroom, specifically in terms of motivation, when the students at hand take content classes in more than one foreign language. This approach is suggested to be particularly innovative and necessary, given that the use of English as an international lingua franca has led to qualitative differences between studying English as opposed to other target languages. It aims in particular to ascertain whether there are quantitative differences between the participants’ English and French language learning motivation. This is done by means of language learning motivation questionnaires which investigate the learners’ L2 Motivational Self-System in each target language. The findings show that participants generally have higher language learning motivation towards English than French. In addition, longitudinal analyses point to a clear effect of CLIL classes on the students’ motivation. These results make an important contribution to our knowledge of motivation in multilingual CLIL and are of particular interest to CLIL researchers and stakeholders. They highlight in particular a clear need to better prepare CLIL methodologies when dealing with multiple languages, to ensure that students reap the benefits on offer in multilingual CLIL.