Onset and expansion of L2 cognitive academic language proficiency in bilingual settings: CALP in CLIL

This paper sets out to trace the appearance and evolution of academic language structures in a second language, in formal bilingual contexts. The setting of the study was a selection of secondary schools where a content and language integrated approach (CLIL immersion-type programmes) was set up. A corpus was formed of 244 historical narratives, from 4 schools, of subjects from 9th to 12th grade (age range 13–17 years). Analytical software tools such as Synlex (Lu, 2010) were used to consider the evolution of complex syntax and cohesion. The study concludes with observations pertaining to the growth of cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) in content-driven learning settings, the non-linear development of the L2 system and the major metrics which undergo change over the period.