https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7669-5748
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ABSTRACT
This paper explores the longitudinal development of the phrasicon (i.e. phraseological lexicon) of French-speaking learners of Dutch in two different educational settings: Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and traditional foreign language learning contexts (non-CLIL). We followed 195 pupils and analyzed a corpus of 390 written texts gathered at two data collection points: at the beginning of their fifth year of secondary school education (Grade 11) and at the end of their sixth year (Grade 12). We examined both frequency and accuracy of the phrasicon. Whilst SLA research often supports the fact that learners at a higher proficiency level have a larger phrasicon and that CLIL learners’ overall language competence is higher than their non-CLIL peers, our results show no significant increase in the frequency of use of phraseological units in CLIL; a significant decrease for two categories (referential phrasemes and lexical collocations) is even noticed. non-CLIL learners display no significant change in the use of various types of phrasemes. Regarding accuracy, both CLIL and non-CLIL learners’ phrasicon become more accurate (fewer errors) over time in more than 50% of the categories. Here again, no statistically significant improvement was noted among the groups between the two data collection points.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Isa Hendrikx, Audrey De Smet, Morgane Simonis and Luk Van Mensel for their assistance in the data collection. We also warmly thank the schools and participants that took part in the study.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 ‘Time’ explained only 3% of the variance and random effects accounted for an additional 14%.
2 Composite measure based on different variables, on a scale from 1 to 5 (never – rarely – sometimes – often – very often): (1) frequency of use of Dutch on the internet; (2) frequency of use of Dutch outside school (how often do you speak); (3) frequency of input in Dutch outside school (how often do you hear) and (4) frequency of contact with native speakers.
3 A six-digit number was assigned to each learner for the sake of anonymization.
4 The FDR method ‘has more power than the Bonferroni adjustment, as it seeks only to control the proportion of errors that are found in tests where the null hypothesis was rejected, but keeps the overall number of decision errors at the 5% alpha level’ (Larson-Hall Citation2009, 252).
5 No phraseological errors were found for the categories Superfluous separable particle and Noun used in the singular instead of plural.
6 We decided to look at text length to have a more general measure of production that is related to phraseological development. In fact, the longer the text written by the learner, the more phraseological units s/he is likely to produce.
7 gestuurd
8 naar (…) gegaan
9 verjaardagsfeest
10 plaatsvinden
11 carnavalsfeest
12 gekocht
13 ter conclusie
14 hulp nodig hebben
15 jongen
16 woonde in
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Notes on contributors
Amélie Bulon
Amélie Bulon is a researcher at the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium). She is involved in several research projects on the acquisition and teaching of multilingualism. Her research focusses more specifically on the acquisition and teaching of multiword units to learners of English.
Fanny Meunier
Fanny Meunier is professor of English language, linguistics and didactics at UCLouvain (Belgium). Her main research interest is instructed second language acquisition. She is leading and participating in several national and international research projects on multilingualism, multiliteracies, and digital literacies.