Students' language use for co-construction of knowledge in CLIL group-work activities: a comparison with L1 settings

The role of classroom interaction in CLIL has been addressed in many recent studies. However, most of the existing research has mainly focused on teacher-fronted lessons. The present study aims to analyse and compare students' language use and co-construction of knowledge during group work activities in CLIL and L1 history classes. In order to obtain comparable data, the same prompt for group discussion was used in both contexts. The data were analysed by means of a multi-level methodological approach including two layers: interaction and register. The main finding reveals that CLIL students seem to work more collaboratively than L1 students. They co-construct knowledge by building on and challenging each other's ideas, meeting the requirements of exploratory talk, in which students are critically and constructively engaged.