Investigating young Finnish CLIL pupils’ perceptions of foreign language use through visual narratives

Abstract

This article explores how pupils in early CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) education perceive language skills and use. The participants were 25 French-medium and 16 English-medium CLIL pupils in Grade 2 (aged 8 years). They had received CLIL education since the 1st Grade. The data were visual narratives drawn by the pupils and some associated open-ended questions they answered in writing. The data were analyzed using visual and content analysis. The results show that the pupils’ perceptions of language were a combination of traditional and modern views of language. The pupils compartmentalized the different languages as separate entities. They mostly saw language being used with native speakers. Technological artefacts were absent even though they are an integral part of children’s life in Finland. Also, the pupils considered language being a vehicle for oral communication outside school. The results bear implications for CLIL education and early language teaching in general.

‘Me Siento Pequeña’ – A Visual Approach Towards Students’ Experiences with the Transition from Elementary to Secondary School in Spanish-German bilingual Education

“…Following this methodological and epistemological tradition, the present study adapts some of the principles attached to the use of visual methodologies with children and addresses the specific issue of transitions in CLIL as lived or envisioned by children in bilingual German-Spanish programs. While there are, to the best of our knowledge, no previous studies combining both themes (transition and CLIL LOTE seen by children), our study nevertheless presents some similarities with the studies by Mäntylä, Roiha and Dufva (2022) and Melo-Pfeifer and Schmidt (2019), the first one about children's perspectives on CLIL and the second on young refugees' envisionment of their transition from language classes to regular classes (from one social space to another). Both studies used visual narratives to tackle participants' perspectives.…”

“…We performed a multimodal analysis of visual narratives, complemented by an open written questionnaire. Our study adds to the relatively scarce literature on students' perspectives on CLIL and BE (Dafouz & Smit, 2022;Duarte, 2022;Mäntylä et al 2022).…”

“…Both studies used visual narratives to tackle participants' perspectives. Mäntylä, Roiha and Dufva (2022) focused on how young learners, participants in French CLIL classes in Finland, visualise language skills through drawing, and how they describe their pictures verbally. Despite naming various languages and displaying positive attitudes towards CLIL (in both French and English), languages are seen in an additive and compartmentalised way, being evidence of monoglossic practices attached to CLIL (as we referred to above): these representations are similar to those collected in non-CLIL programs.…”