Socioeconomic Status and its Impact on Language and Content Attainment in CLIL Contexts

Abstract

This article deals with a crucial variable in CLIL settings: socioeconomic status, which was measured via parents' educational level (high, medium or low). It sheds light on the FL, L1 and subject content attainment of 129 bilingual learners in Primary Education and Compulsory Secondary Education schools in eastern Andalusia (more specifically , in the provinces of Granada and Almería). It provides a detailed comparison of these outcomes with those also obtained from 219 students in traditional EFL streams. Six state and two charter schools participated. Differences in the motivation, verbal intelligence and extramural exposure of these students are also examined, together with their evolution from Primary to Compulsory Secondary Education. All the variables considered are subjected to discriminant analyses in order to determine which of them explains the greatest variance in language attainment and content achievement results.