Writing-to-learn content in a CLIL Spanish compulsory secondary education environment. An exploratory study

Abstract

Writing to learn language (WLL) is an approach that has been researched to a great extent within Second Language Acquisition studies and the benefits that have been found are plentiful. However, investigations into Writing to Learn Content are scarce and follow an array of investigative methodologies leading to the lack of clear results for this type of learning. WLC is a teaching approach that explores the benefits writing may hold in terms of non-linguistic content acquisition. This paper is an exploratory study into the potential benefits writing may have for students to acquire content knowledge, with a specific emphasis on Spanish Secondary school students studying History within a CLIL environment. The thesis is divided into two parts; the first part explores the background research relating to WLC. The second part consists in the exploratory study on WLC and the effects WLC tasks have on Secondary school students by implementing a pre/post-test task method. The results show that those students, who participated in WLC tasks, obtained slightly higher results in the post-task writing activity.