Yolanda Ruiz de Zarobe

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1 IntroductionContent and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) emerged in the 1990s as a timely solution to upgrade foreign language proficiency in Europe and to eventually achieve plurilingualism in a context where many of the educational programmes did not seem to have provided the desired results in terms of language learning outcomes. However, CLIL programmes do not only aim at developing the linguistic competence of students (using languages to leam, while learning to use the languages) but also try to increase their sustainable learning dimension by means of developing methods, intercultural skills and, quite importantly, learning strategies (Marsh, Maljers & Hartiala 2001).Learning strategies defined as activities that assist in enhancing learning and student performance (Chamot & O'Malley 1994) become key elements in CLIL, as does strategic training instruction (Chamot & O'Malley 1994; O'Malley & Chamot 1990). Nevertheless, although some studies suggest that learners in CLIL programmes are particularly strong in strategic competence to compensate for their lack of linguistic resources (Lorenzo & Moore 2010), there is an evident scarcity of research on how CLIL programmes enable students to overcome the barriers in the learning process itself by using strategic information.These difficulties are even more evident when we deal with reading abilities in a second language that require 'a complex integration of cognitive processes (e.g., memory, attention, speed, automaticity), background knowledge, language knowledge, and an array of component skills and strategies specific for reading comprehension' (Jiang & Grabe 2011, p. 4). Jiang and Grabe (2011) further differentiate between reading skills and reading strategies: the first ones refer to linguistic abilities that are gradually acquired, while strategies are the attempts that readers consciously make to enable reading comprehension, but they also acknowledge the constant debate about the similarities and differences between both concepts. The complexity of reading can further be demonstrated when we try to identify the key component skills of reading that have been described over the years and that range from word recognition or vocabulary knowledge, to morphology, syntax and discourse knowledge.Many of the studies about second language reading strategies have examined the effects of explicit strategy training on reading comprehension across various educational and geographical contexts. However, there is still very little research on young learners in primary education (with notable exceptions, such as Macaro & Erler 2008), and virtually no intervention studies in CLIL contexts. In order to fill this gap, this longitudinal study will aim at examining if and how strategic instruction can provide the specific techniques that are needed for successful language learning in CLIL settings (Chamot 2001). More precisely we will analyse how reading strategic instruction can increase metalinguistic awareness and thus, improve the students' receptive competence with the eventual aim of helping them to learn better.2 Reading skills and strategy instructionIt is widely accepted that reading involves a basic set of skills that young children need to be equipped with in order to accomplish the basics of literacy and to master other literacy-related tasks throughout their school years. The importance of reading skills has been attested and assessed internationally in different ways. One of the most widely-recognized assessments is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey tests, a standardized test designed specifically to compare student achievement across international contexts. In these surveys, reading skills, apart from mathematical and scientific literacy in terms of general competencies, are assessed to know how students can apply the knowledge and skills they have learned at school to real-life challenges. …

A. Speakers of local languages that are not used at school. This is the case of minority language speakers whose language is not used at school and also speakers of languages that can be demographically stronger but which, due to their low status, are not used in the curriculum. This is the case of many speakers of Quechua in Peru or Nahuatl in Mexico. B. Speakers of languages that are not part of the curriculum of the host country. This is mainly related to the mobility of the population and in these cases the home language is different from that of the host country. Examples of this situation include children with Turkish as a home language who live in the Netherlands or Germany or children with Punjabi as a home language in the UK. C. Speakers of majority languages that are used at school but who are taught some subjects through the medium of a local minority language so as to improve their language skills and provide them with better opportunities. This is the situation of students with English as a home language in English–Spanish dual immersion programmes in the USA or in Welsh-medium education in the UK. D. Speakers of majority or minority languages that are used at school but who are taught some subjects through the medium of an international language (English in most cases) so as to improve their language skills and job prospects. Examples of this situation can be found in many areas where English is learned as a foreign language such as Austria or Sweden and in bilingual regions in areas where English is taught as a third language such as the German–Italian bilingual region of South Tyrol in Italy.

El presente articulo investiga la actuación de distintos pronombres sujeto en la adquisición de un sistema no nativo. Por un lado, estudiamos la evolución en el proceso adquisitivo de los sujetos referenciales. Por otro, analizamos algunas construcciones con sujetos pleonásticos, que incluyen oraciones existenciales y construcciones de concordancia copulativa. Tras realizar varias pruebas a estudiantes españoles de inglés, pudimos determinar cómo el proceso adquisitivo dijiere con respec­ to a los distintos sujetos. Los pronombres pleonásticos fueron los últimos en adquirirse, sobre todo en aquellos contextos que resultan semánticamente complejos para los hablantes nativos de español, como es el caso de las construcciones de concordancia copulativa. Estos resultados harán que debamos replantearnos algunas teorias sobre el valor de los sujetos pleonasticos en la reestructuración del parametro de Sujeto Nulo.

El Aprendizaje Integrado de Contenidos en Lengua Extranjera (AICLE) se ha aceptado en los últimos años como uno de los enfoques educativos preferidos para desarrollar el multilingüismo en Europa. España ha seguido asimismo esta tendencia, aunque su implantación difiere según las comunidades, bien sean monolingües bien bilingües, ya que en este último caso el aprendizaje de la lengua extranjera, normalmente el inglés, debe acomodarse  a las dos lenguas ya existentes en la comunidad. El objeto de este artículo es llevar a cabo una comparación de la competencia lingüística obtenida en dos comunidades bilingües, el País Vasco y Cataluña, en dos entornos educativos distintos: por un lado, un acercamiento tradicional al aprendizaje del inglés como asignatura (no-AICLE) y, por otro, un entorno integrado AICLE. En concreto, analizaremos la competencia escrita que estudiantes de educación secundaria obtienen en estas dos comunidades cuando se analizan variables distintas. En primer lugar, co...

Content-based instruction is an approach to second language learning that requires the use of a foreign language to practise content. Content-based programmes use the foreign language as the medium for learning the content of several courses rather than concentrating on the language as the object of the course. The aim of this paper is to analyse the differences in the acquisition of English as a foreign language between two groups of students who began learning the language at the same age, but who followed a different pedagogical approach to the language: traditional instruction versus content-based instruction. These students were asked to complete a writing task. Results show that the group who integrated content and language obtained better results than the traditional group, although those differences were not statistically significant in most cases. The explanation may lie on instructional reasons that involve the amount of instruction received and the approach to writing in ...

Enseñar hoy una lengua extranjera significa plantearse un reto que exige responder de manera novedosa al menos a tres preguntas: ¿qué enseñar? ¿cómo enseñarlo? ¿por qué enseñarlo? Y en el intento de dar respuesta a estas preguntas se ha fraguado este libro, confeccionado por once especialistas universitarios en la materia que buscan poner de relieve lo más sobresaliente de enseñar una lengua extranjera en el presente más actual. Este libro puede resultar de utilidad para personas interesadas tanto en el ámbito teórico como práctico y está concebido para un público muy amplio: docentes de lenguas de cualquier nivel y tipo de institución, estudiantes de idiomas, creadores de métodos, creadores de materiales, personal de instituciones relacionado con las lenguas y, en general, para toda persona interesada en las lenguas y en su aprendizaje o enseñanza. Lorenzo Galés, Neus ( 2013) "Enseñar la comprensión lectora" (pp. 294-369), at "Enseñar la comprensión lectora" . B...

This article contrasts two studies that focus on language learning strategies (Study 1) and strategy instruction (Study 2) in CLIL programs. Drawing from the literature on language learning strategies and strategy instruction, we propose a theoretical framework that takes into account metacognitive awareness as a useful concept to capture the interrelatedness of teaching, learning and using language learningstrategies in CLIL. We approach metacognitive awareness from two positions: 1) as a concept that describes self-regulated learning in students and constitutes one of the important areas of language learning strategies (metacognitive strategies), and 2) as a key concept when describing the decisions teachers make in their pedagogical planning and implementation, including when deciding on which language learning strategies to single out for instruction, and how to instruct these. We understand these two positions as interrelated and “speaking to each other”, scaffolding the learni...

The term Language Awareness (LA) covers a broad range of issues relating to learning, teaching and using languages. These include knowledge about a language itself; how people best learn languages and how they communicate in real-life situations. ...