Keywords

1 Incidental Vocabulary Learning

The techniques for teaching foreign language vocabulary are numerous and wide ranging. The field is in a constant state of exploration and refinement. Recent studies include research into the effects student collaboration on English as a second language (ESL) vocabulary learning (Ariffin, 2021), methods of vocabulary study in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic (Tahir et al., 2021), and the impact of social media on learning second language (L2) vocabulary (Nguyen, 2021).

With respect to the explicit teaching of vocabulary in the ESL classroom, Tahir et al. (2021) offers a strong example of the descriptive style of vocabulary teaching. Although the present research and the Tahir study share some research procedures, such as using a pre/post-test, the content of this study was substantively different in that it does not represent explicit vocabulary teaching in the context of a traditional L2 classroom.

Another interesting recent research study was conducted by Kaivanpanah et al. (2021). In that study, both the explicit and implicit approaches were explored in one experiment. That study showed using explicit teaching in combination with modified-implicit activities results in stronger outcomes than implicit approaches alone.

Less research has been conducted about teaching attitudes with respect to implicit approaches to teaching. However, Sun et al. (2022) have conducted an interesting study comparing teachers’ attitudes toward implicit and explicit approaches. By developing an implicit association test, the research was able to find an objective method of exposing teacher bias and reveal that teachers do not always say what they think. The researchers concluded that the teachers’ opposing attitudes were attributable to the teachers’ personal, institutional, and social contexts.

The present research is concerned with using implicit vocabulary teaching and learning in the context of the CLIL classroom. Therefore, this orientation necessarily limits the review of recent research to the implicit arena of teaching and learning. That said, no matter whether the teaching approach is implicit or explicit, vocabulary learning is the entry and fundamental element to new language proficiency in reading, listening, speaking and writing (Li, 2015; Richards & Rodgers, 2001). Wilkins (1972) asserts that with respect to language one can convey many things without grammar but they cannot convey anything without vocabulary. A great body of investigative research exists about how vocabulary acquisition occurs and the quantity of vocabulary that L2 learners need to acquire for proficient communication. For example, Nation (2006) suggests that L2 learners need to acquire knowledge of around 6,000–7,000-word families for listening and 8,000–9,000 for reading. Although some research (Schmitt et al., 2015) has challenged aspects of Nation’s conclusions, the recommendation stands that L2 teachers and learners must set and meet vocabulary goals for teaching and learning.

In the more traditional, highly structured L2 learning classrooms, students usually gain lexical knowledge through the teacher’s explicit teaching of vocabulary. By this method, students learn at least the surface definition of words. However, the surface knowledge of a word may not hold the depth of meaning variability the word deserves. For example, a student may learn the meaning of the word “bore” but they will not understand the difference between saying “I’m bored” and “I’m boring.” More in-depth word knowledge takes time because it involves exposure to words on a fuller linguistic spectrum, such as in reading and listening activities where they may encounter a new word incidentally alongside other related vocabulary—with which they are familiar-that helps define the new word in context.

Unfortunately, due to the rising student numbers in classes—upwards of 30 where there were previously upwards of 20—and limited class time (once a week for 100 min), along with other curricular attitudes that limit a student’s out of class study time, the traditional method of explicit vocabulary instruction has become inefficient. Consequently, classes cannot adequately expand the students’ exposure to words, which is necessary for them to meet the desired goal of in-depth word knowledge (Schmitt et al., 2015). Thus, research has been investigating alternative approaches for learners to acquire new words, and some studies suggest that incidental learning may present a valuable opportunity for learners to acquire word knowledge that explicit teaching can no longer always cover (Al-Homoud, 2019; Laufer, 2003).

Incidental vocabulary learning is a by-product of cognitive activities that involve other aspects of comprehension, such as reading (Al-Homoud, 2019), listening or word-focused activities, such as role plays and vocabulary games (Laufer, 2003; Ramos, 2015; Tang, 2020). However, other research shows that, in addition to reading, positive outcomes for learning vocabulary can also come incidentally through task-based approaches (Sarani & Sahebi, 2012) and game-based learning (Reynolds, 2017).

Therefore, as a method of promoting incidental vocabulary learning in the presently changing classroom environment, this study looks at the emerging innovative approach to L2 teaching called Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) (Coyle et al., 2010). CLIL advances the idea of using a second language to learn subject content, which in turn enables the acquisition of L2 knowledge. Thus, with CLIL, the more a student uses a second language to learn about a particular subject, the more deeply they will also learn the second language. The latter expansion of language knowledge then heightens their ability to further study the subject, and so on in a quasi-hermeneutic circle of knowledge building. In fact, by coupling content with language, CLIL necessarily implies two related concepts: (1) That language learning is the linguistic interpretation of subject content and (2) That knowledge is the learner’s belief in that interpretation.

CLIL provides an ideal dual-facet teaching formulation for its dual-focused—content-language—method of learning. One facet is the 4Cs framework of Communication, Content, Cognition and Culture; the companion facet is the CLIL Language Triptych: language of learning, language for learning, and language through learning. The CLIL method also structures its language learning objectives by engaging the cognitive demands of content together with both the novel use of previously learned L2 elements and the use of new yet-to-be-learned L2 elements (Léon-Henri, 2015). Although teachers in the CLIL setting make the interrelationship between content objectives and language objectives explicit (Coyle et al., 2010) the approach also necessarily leaves the door open to incidental learning. Thus, not all L2 learning with CLIL is incidental because it is often fundamental to the content. However, the explicit focus of vocabulary learning does not end with a word’s denotative meaning but rather continues on to engage the connotative interrelationships between vocabulary and content. In addition, as this study will show, the relationships between words in the context of content can lead to the incidental broadening of a learner’s lexical knowledge.

Given the content-language learning environment of CLIL, the approach possibly offers a solution to the problems of both large class size and the time limitations placed on traditional L2 classes. As such, CLIL units may also offer a teaching alternative that deepens the L2 experience for learners that they would not have in an otherwise traditional classroom setting.

Furthermore, by removing the students from the structured class environment, the CLIL approach places them in a self-generating learning structure relative to both the content and the L2. Thus, an element of language learning in the wild occupies every phase of the CLIL activity because the L2 is a paramount presence in the learners’ experience of the content.

In order to discover how effective the CLIL approach is for vocabulary acquisition, the current study investigates whether incidental vocabulary learning within the 4C’s framework and the Language Triptych can accomplish the learners’ L2 vocabulary goals. Although this question anticipates a quantitative result, qualitative aspects of teaching can also motivate students’ incidental learning. However, the focus here is on the former.

2 Language in the CLIL Context

In recent decades, L2 learning has moved in a number of directions, all leading away from traditional methodologies, such as the grammar-translation method, the focus of which is squarely on the L2. At the other end of the spectrum would be the application of project-based learning (PBL) to L2 instruction. Using the PBL methodology moves the focus off the L2 and onto an interesting, perhaps vital problem the students attempt to solve while using the L2. Somewhere near the middle of these two extremes lies theme based L2 learning, such as English for specific purposes (ESP), where the teaching focus remains primarily on the L2 but an environment—a specific purpose—serves as a kind of backdrop against which the L2 learning takes place. CLIL falls somewhat closer to PBL on the teaching approach spectrum because it involves the students in the actual study of some aspect (content) of a real subject. Thus, with CLIL, the more traditional L2 learning backdrop takes on a more complete reality and moves to share center stage with the goals of L2 learning. In effect, the CLIL students actively engage with the content in a simulation of real world situations. However, as the label makes clear, CLIL is a dual-focused language learning pedagogy, concentrating on the Integration of Content with the second Language in the Learning environment. However, while their engagement with the content involves a simulation, their L2 engagement is both real and immediate. As Marsh (2000) explains, this approach aims to help motivate learners to pick up languages in a more natural way.

Through carefully designed teaching activities (Meyer, 2013), CLIL learners use higher-order thinking skills in the target language to convey their thoughts about one or more aspects of a subject, which comprises the content of a lesson (Coyle et al., 2010). In other words, the content is not the L2, per se, but rather any aspect of a subject that the learner then uses the L2 to think, read, and/or converse about. At the same time, the CLIL teacher does explicitly teach some aspects of the L2; these serve as a learning scaffold, a language for learning, that the students use as points of entry into the content. The teacher will also introduce other bits of language/word knowledge that are central to the content and which, therefore, the learners are likely to encounter when completing their CLIL tasks. Both of these aspects of L2 information stimulate the power of recognition that is central to learning of all kinds (Gadamer et al., 1986).

3 The 4Cs Framework

The 4Cs Framework—Content, Communication, Cognition and Culture—not only integrates the focal elements of CLIL but also provides lesson-plan guidelines for teachers to meet their desired content and language learning goals (Coyle et al., 2010; Meyer, 2013). For example, Content refers to the range of themes, topics, and practical aspects of a subject selected for a CLIL project. Likewise, during CLIL learning activities, Communication takes the learner beyond grammar and lexical knowledge to a deeper linguistic engagement with the content, thereby developing their contextual understanding of the target language. As a result, Communication intensifies the language acquisition experience by building fluency through engagement with the fundamental content-related language precisely when learners need to use it. Cognition in CLIL energizes the learning process through activities that stimulate higher-order thinking skills, which in turn focus or concentrate the learner’s use of language on understanding the content. Finally, Culture in the CLIL framework actually refers to the cross-cultural perspectives that learners acquire through the integration of new content and new language. In addition, this Cultural component of the 4Cs framework promotes personalized learning, that is, the learner’s independent discovery of new word and content knowledge. Personalized learning not only increases the depth of the learner’s understanding but also simultaneously and incidentally builds self-awareness. Thus, this latter subjective aspect of CLIL not only sets it qualitatively apart from the objective experience of explicit vocabulary learning but also may trigger incidental vocabulary building and acquisition.

3.1 The Language Triptych

One important element of the Communication component of the 4Cs framework is the Language Triptych, which specifies the process and goals of language acquisition central to its pedagogy (Coyle et al., 2010). The first component, the language of learning, refers to “the language for learners to access the basic concepts and skills relating to the subject theme or topic” (Coyle et al., 2010, p. 37). The language of learning is also the first stage of CLIL planning and activity; as such, it involves analyzing the language needed for planning a lesson, such as the key words, phrases, and grammatical functions the learners will encounter. That is, while the teacher may not explicitly teach all these elements, they do lay the groundwork for the learners’ incidental encounters with them during the planned CLIL activity. The second component, language for learning, “focuses on the kind of language needed to operate in a foreign language environment” (Coyle et al., 2010, p. 37). At this stage, the teacher needs to consider the learners’ previous L2 learning history to ensure the lesson plan is compatible with their levels of competency. Thus, language for learning is more functional, providing a kind of language scaffold that supports discussion, task demands, cognitive strategies, and other classroom talk perhaps not always directly connected to the content. The third component, language through learning, “is based on the principle that effective learning cannot take place without active involvement of language and thinking” (Coyle et al., 2010, p. 37). So, in this phase the language becomes the medium of learning both the language used and the topic of the language. Here the essence of integration in CLIL is most apparent, as the language operates hand-in-hand with the content to complete the CLIL activity. Thus, the Language Triptych serves as the connector for all the objectives persisting between the content and language. However, to help guide teachers in their application and management of the Language Triptych while planning their CLIL exercises, Coyle has conceived the 3As pragmatic tool (Coyle, 2005).

3.1.1 The 3As

The 3As refer to Analyze, Add, and Apply (or Assure). The planning tool operates in three stages that correspond to the Language Triptych. Thus, the first stage involves a systematic linguistic analysis of the content to define the language of learning. The purpose is “to identify key words (including specialized contextualized vocabulary) phrases, grammatical functions for concept formation and comprehension” (Coyle et al., 2010, p. 7). The second stage concerns the language for learning and begins to shift the focus from the teacher’s planning to the learner’s experience by adding “language experiences…which enable the learner to operate effectively in a CLIL setting” (Coyle et al., 2010, p. 7). These additions include the language that supports “learner strategies, classroom talk, discussion, task demands” (Coyle et al., 2010, p. 7) and so on, which comprises the learning scaffold central to the language for learning. Finally, stage three, the “application stage” makes the CLIL experience the most advantageous for incidental learning by assuring that the language through learning has both “cognitive and cultural capital” by extending the learners’ “cognitive skills and cultural awareness” (Coyle et al., 2010, p. 7).

Considered together, the 4Cs framework and its component Language Triptych suggest a classroom setting that involves carefully designed activities that guide learners through an educational journey. However, since even the most broadly educated teachers may not have enough in-depth knowledge about the Content they choose for a CLIL activity, Meyer (2013) has created the CLIL-Pyramid as a useful and dependable organizational resource.

3.1.2 The CLIL-Pyramid

It includes templates and tools to help teachers plan and organize CLIL activities by identifying quality principles and corresponding strategies (Meyer, 2013, pp. 296–307). According to the CLIL-pyramid, a valid CLIL activity needs to address six principles:

  1. 1.

    rich input, which triggers the target language acquisition

  2. 2.

    scaffolded learning, which offers the students learning support in addition to instruction

  3. 3.

    rich interaction and pushed output, which creates the dynamic exchange of ideas that lead to strategic discussions, peer learning, and group action

  4. 4.

    the added (inter-)cultural dimension, which promotes cross cultural perspectives

  5. 5.

    make it HOT, that is, ensure that the activity engages the higher order thinking skills of cognition, principally analysis, synthesis and evaluation (Krathwohl, 2002)

  6. 6.

    sustainable learning, which means ensuring a healthy learning ecosystem in which knowledge is co-created and shared (Sustainable Learning, 2021)

4 Incidental Learning

The decision to look at CLIL in relation to incidental vocabulary acquisition was not entirely based on finding invigorating and motivating L2 teaching methods. In fact, key research on incidental learning shows its intrinsic relationship to CLIL. As Marswick and Watkins (2001) express it, “Informal and incidental learning take place wherever people have the need, motivation, and opportunity for learning” (p. 28). CLIL precisely creates these three values: need, motivation and opportunity. Marsick, along with Volpe (1999), also created a list of incidental learning characteristics (Marswick & Watkins, 2001) that closely align with the characteristics of CLIL, making them quite compatible pedagogical methodologies. Both CLIL and incidental learning integrate with daily routines; both internal and external jolts, while not highly conscious, can trigger CLIL and incidental learning; the inductive process of both random and chance learning engages the characteristics of action and reflection that CLIL and incidental learning have in common; and, finally, the social experience of learning with others is fundamental to both CLIL and incidental learning.

While the qualities of integration and subconscious learning may seem fairly commonly understood, these and the other characteristics on the list deserve further explanation. Integration in the context of this research adds the dimension of informal learning to the integration of content and language in CLIL. In a sense, by establishing integration as central to the methodology in the first place, CLIL unintentionally also opened the door to the integration of incidental learning, which in turn becomes a less conscious aspect of both the content and language learning experience.

The notion of triggering incidental learning here refers to sudden or surprise events (jolts) that shift the learner’s thinking about their situation (Marswick & Watkins, 2001). Such triggers are bound to occur during CLIL activities because while they involve structured tasks they also engage the learner in improvisational encounters. In those situations, there is a chance that the student might be jolted into using the L2 in novel ways, which could incidentally add to their depth of word knowledge.

The somewhat esoteric notion of incidental learning being an inductive process of reflection and action is actually quite important. While the incorporation of reflection and action are central to CLIL activities, the characteristic idea here suggests that the influence of those activities, especially on higher order thinking, stimulates the learning process. It also highlights the principle that CLIL experiences are not structured by explicit learning directions or instructions but rather informal and less intentional learning paths. These paths need the learner to reflect and take subsequent action to really have an effect. CLIL activities complement this idea because, although for all practical purposes they end, the learner nevertheless actually reaches no fixed conclusions; that is, CLIL supports sustainable learning rather than fixed outcomes.

Finally, the CLIL learning experience is by nature not a solitary one. It always involves students in social learning situations, through which they learn with and because of one another. This value is personified in the present study by the division of participants into table groups or teams. However, this value also fosters incidental learning because the students induce one another to learn from each other. Therefore, the value of the social is incidental and not explicit.

This closer understanding of incidental learning reveals a hidden but no less valuable qualitative aspect of the CLIL methodology. Furthermore, it pertains not only to the language learning focus of CLIL but also equally to the content learning experience. In other words, the incidental tacitly triggers or intensifies the integration. However, most important of all is the correlation between incidental learning and HOT, which is central to CLIL. If cognitive activity is too structured or too taken up with explicit directed learning, the options for spontaneity diminish, leaving the incidental little room for influence. Consequently, this research, which addresses an unexplored aspect of CLIL, sought to explore whether CLIL tasks, as HOT non-explicit activities that allow for greater spontaneity, can stimulate learners' incidental vocabulary learning to a level beyond what the traditional time-limited explicit teaching of vocabulary is able to accomplish.

Thus, the research goals—which also account for the methodology used—were to determine, first, if CLIL activities might move the learners’ knowledge of targeted vocabulary words beyond their surface meanings and toward their effective use in real situations, and, second, if those activities led learners toward an understanding of vocabulary contextually related to the target words.

5 Methodology

5.1 Research Design

Consequently, the quasi-experimental design of this study needed to support an exploration of the effects of a theme-based CLIL task on the learners’ incidental vocabulary learning. Therefore, the study used a pre-/posttest experimental instruction design that involved two groups: (1) a control group of 13 learners, and (2) an experimental group of 14 learners. The control group received the theme-based instruction using a traditional (but nonetheless engaging) lecture and discussion approach, while the experimental group received the theme-based instruction using the CLIL activity-based approach.

5.2 Participants

The study recruited participants from two sophomore general education English classes sponsored by the Language Center at a private university of technology in central Taiwan. The Language Center’s curriculum intentionally steers away from teaching English as a traditional L2 subject and instead uses the Workplace as the content environment. The English lessons are then taught within that context, rather than as L2 lessons.

The students in these classes had an English CEFR proficiency level of A2, which was determined by both the student’s score on the Taiwan Technological and Vocational Education system examination and the university’s Language Center testing program. However, a number of students in each class were unable to either join or complete the study, which limits the data for this research to only those students who fully participated. The time schedules for the two classes were on Monday mornings and Thursday mornings, respectively. The overall aim (backdrop) of the class as established by the university was to help learners understand workplace English through situations and communications prompted by various related learning activities. Thus, the participants were 27 sophomores in total (9 males, 18 females), with 13 in the control group and 14 in the experimental group. The participants took the pre-/posttests to assess their proficiency with vocabulary on the general topic of business event invitations, which included related telephone communications. A two-sample t-test compared the vocabulary knowledge between two groups. No statistically significant difference in accuracy of vocabulary knowledge on the pretest showed up between the control group (M = 10.6, SD = 17.98) and the experimental group (M = 11.28, SD = 10.17); t(25) = −0.123, p = 0.903 > 0.05), indicating that all the student participants’ prior vocabulary knowledge was at roughly the same level. Therefore, the researcher randomly assigned one class to be the control group and the other class to be the experimental group. The main instructional difference between the groups was that the control group received explicit vocabulary, phrase, and grammar lessons using the traditional instructional approach of lecture, discussion, and class activity, while the experimental group received the same number of hours of instruction but using a CLIL-based instructional methodology that required them to search for learning resources with the support of a handout that accompanied the CLIL activity.

5.3 Instruments

As content in CLIL “can range from the delivery of elements taken directly from a statutory national curriculum to a project based on topical issues drawing together different aspects of the curriculum” (Coyle et al., 2010, p. 28), the current study engages students to workplace situations. The experiment used a list of 59 English vocabulary words and two- or three-word terms (such as “costume ball” and “year-end party”) that included 10 target words (italic) explicitly taught to all the participants (see Table 2). The words and terms on the list were chosen from the selection of textbooks recommended by the Language Center for the course—and therefore commensurate with the students’ English abilities—and other texts also determined by the Language Center to be concordant with the students’ English level. In a few cases, the words and terms were adjusted to conform to daily usage according to the advice of a native speaker of English who is also a Language Center associate professor. All the words related directly or indirectly to the planning of business events and related telephone communications. A vocabulary test assessed the learners’ understanding of the list contents both before and after their groups’ learning activities. This assessment enabled a comparison of the vocabulary knowledge the participants had already acquired before the experiment began with that acquired as a result of the CLIL unit’s activities.

In addition, the vocabulary test measured the productive as opposed to the receptive skills of the participants. As Nation (2013) explains, “productive vocabulary use involves wanting to express a meaning through speaking or writing and retrieving and producing the appropriate spoken or written word form” (p. 47). Since the test required the participants to type out a translation of each item on the list from English into their native language, it was able to measure these productive skills.

The class learning platform provides settings for randomly assigning questions while preventing students from opening other browsers during the pre/post-tests. Two evaluators—the researcher and a research assistant (who was present throughout the participants’ studies)—working independently, graded the translation answers, which the class learning platform coded. Each correct translation scored one point on the test, with the total points then converted into a percentage of 100. Most of the participants completed this data collection session within 30 of the allotted 50 min. All the participants’ translations on the posttest showed a high level of reliability, r = 0.979, n = 27, p < 0.001 (Tables 1 and 2).

Table 1 Correlations of two evaluators
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Table 2 59 Vocabulary words
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5.4 Procedure

Instructional pedagogy

The pedagogical objectives of CLIL include both teaching goals and learning outcomes, with the need for vocabulary building being fundamental to both of these divisions. This study explored whether, and the extent to which, the CLIL approach could facilitate not only the learning of the 10 target words on the list but also the incidental learning of the other 49 related vocabulary items on the list. The CLIL topic (content) used for the study was business event planning and related telephone communication. The teaching goal was to develop the students’ general understanding of how to plan a business event and the etiquette of conducting negotiations related to the event with people on the telephone. Since the CLIL learning process heavily emphasizes the importance of achieving learning outcomes, the researcher hoped the students would not only learn the 10 target words but also incidentally grasp the meaning and use of a significant percentage of the other 49 vocabulary items by encountering and using them in a CLIL-designed topic-activity.

Although the two classes met for the entire semester of 18 weeks, the unit of instruction designed for this study took place over only three consecutive weeks, or three 100-min-long weekly sessions. The first and last sessions included the 30-min pretest and posttest, respectively. The control group met on Monday mornings and the experimental group met on Thursday mornings. Both groups studied the assigned textbook content, as presented by the teacher, using the textbook materials and supplemental PowerPoint slides.

Supplemental to the core lesson plans for both groups was a vocabulary learning warm-up game to help the students develop their vocabulary learning sensibilities. For the game, each table group or team made a set of flash cards containing generally unfamiliar vocabulary items drawn from the textbook. The students looked up the definition of each item and noted it down on the card. After familiarizing the students with the pronunciation of each item, the teacher randomly called out the words in either English or Chinese. The students on the different teams quickly located the corresponding card, held it up and called out the word in the language that the teacher did not speak. The first two or three teams to correctly identify the word received a point token.

The CLIL unit included activities that engaged language content consisting of short expressions, past tense grammar checking, dialogue practice relating to customer service and helping customers with problems, and listening and speaking lessons. A preliminary activity used a role play model that put the students in the context of restaurant staff. The main activity then centered around a telephone conversation that focused on planning a business year-end dinner party. Both activities used worksheets (see Appendix) that served as guides for students.

Both groups of participants worked in table groups as teams of three to four students. As learning incentives, the students were able to earn point tokens toward the final class scores for each person on the team. For example, students who contributed to the class dynamic by answering questions put to the class received point tokens for their entire team.

The teams in both groups also participated in role play practice dialogues that included a telephone conversation. The students used the flash cards and the telephone conversation worksheet as guides. The teacher adapted the control group’s role play conversations from the textbook, but the teams then used the telephone conversation worksheet to adapt the conversation further to fit situations the team members had invented for their role plays. Each team in the control group participated only with one another in the role plays; so this activity did not involve role playing between the different teams.

The research goal for the Thursday morning experimental group class was to discover whether a CLIL approach would incidentally increase the participants’ word knowledge across the breadth of the vocabulary list. Thus, unlike the control group, the students in the experimental group created their role plays entirely on their own, using only the worksheet as a guide. They did not adapt their role plays from the textbook or any other existing dialogue. This adjustment added the dimension of reality to the role play simulation and required the students to use the language at their disposal in novel ways while possibly incorporating related vocabulary into their dialogues.

In addition, the experimental group’s role plays included the completion of an assigned task (drawn from a set of cards containing various tasks), such as leaving or taking a message, asking for someone’s telephone number, or discovering some specific information. The role-play task cards also assigned the students to their specific roles in the role play. This task itself heightened the role play simulation’s feeling of reality. It also offered the opportunity for triggering jolts that might inspire the learners’ incidental and intuitive use of less immediately familiar L2 word knowledge. To the same ends, the experimental group’s role plays also employed a team-to-team design that had members from one table group role play with members of another table group.

Therefore, the experimental group’s sessions included instructional material to facilitate the completion of the CLIL learning task. These materials included the role-play task cards—which also assigned students to specific roles—a problem record form that helped the students imagine a workplace situation that would include the telephone conversation task, and a task record form that set goals for students relative to their tasks. This latter form also provided space for the students to record their reflections both during and once they had completed their role plays. Reflections recorded during the activity allowed for their contribution to the learners’ action choices. Therefore, recording their reflections during the activity was valuable to the process, a concept that the teacher had to impress upon the students.

Test administration

The study included a pretest and a posttest on the students’ vocabulary knowledge necessary or helpful to planning business events and having event-related telephone conversations. The students took the pretest 30 min before the beginning of the first class session. They took the posttest 30 min before the conclusion of the final class session. Reassuring the participants that these tests were not formal assessments (that is, the tests had no impact on the students’ final course grades) helped alleviate any stress a student might have had over not knowing the translation of a word on the test. However, for the purposes of collecting and interpreting statistical data, the researcher recorded the number of accurate answers for each student and converted it into a comparable percentage.

Control group instruction

The participants in the control group learned about the topic of planning business events and related telephone conversations primarily through question-and-answer sessions conducted by the teacher in both Mandarin Chinese and English. The teacher first posed questions to introduce the topic, then, after discussion, the class followed-up by completing the textbook exercises. In addition, the participants received the telephone conversation worksheet to help them deal with the L2 problems they would encounter when practicing the textbook’s telephone conversation with their team partners. Thus, the learners’ cognitive engagement was limited to the structured framework of a traditional classroom, where the concentration was on language learning with the situational content functioning as a backdrop for the language learning activities.

Experimental group instruction

For the experimental group, the teacher only introduced the topic of planning business events and related telephone conversations, the purpose of asking questions was to capture and focus their attention on the content. The material the control group learned from the textbook exercises was integrated into CLIL activity tasks for the experimental group.

Table 3 abstracts how the 4Cs framework operated for the experimental group, while Table 4 shows how the supplemental planning tool of the 3As worked pragmatically to support the Language Triptych. In practice, all these values are co-functional and interdependent, such that, for example, the content and the cognition are equal forces in the activity just as the language of learning and the stage of analysis work to support the application of the language through learning.

Table 3 CLIL teaching within the 4Cs framework
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Table 4 The 3As stages and CLIL learning procedures
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The principles listed in Table 3 are important concepts that differentiate between the traditional classroom structure and the CLIL activity. For example, rather than the content being some aspect of language, such as word knowledge, as in the control group, the principle of new knowledge and skills applies to business event planning and telephone communication. The principle of learning through interaction is different from the learning by lecture and instruction that applied to the control group. Rather than the learning and thinking process being about completing workbook exercises, vocabulary memorization and quizzes, the CLIL cognition principles involved the students in creative or simulated real life working activities carried out in the L2.

The Language Triptych is as important to CLIL teaching as is the 4Cs framework. Furthermore, given that the students participating in the research were all part of a L2 class, the Language Triptych becomes somewhat more central to the learning outcome than if the students were in, for example, a business management class being taught in English. In the latter case, the content would likely hold a stronger place in the outcome goals.

From the pragmatic perspective, the analysis of the language of learning is perhaps the most traditional aspect of teaching with CLIL. As with the control group, it involved introducing the students to word knowledge that would eventually function in the application stage of language through learning. Nevertheless, some qualitative elements of this aspect of the teaching process were unlike the traditionally structured classroom. Principally, this stage did not stress the language knowledge in terms of what the students needed to learn to pass a test. Rather, the teacher presented the information as fundamental tools the learners would need to fulfill the tasks associated with the activity. In addition, the second and third steps in the analytical stage of the procedure set the stage for the content learning environment, which shifted from the “classroom” to the “simulated working environment.”

The second stage, which adds language to the lesson, establishes the language for learning, serves as learning scaffolding information, and prepares the students for the creative activity involved with the simulated business setting. It also jump-starts the CLIL activity by setting the students on a planning path for their eventual completion of the CLIL tasks, steps one and two in the procedures.

Finally, the third stage of application supports language through learning by setting in motion the CLIL activity and its attendant tasks, which the procedure section describes. During the first two procedural steps of this third assurance stage, the teacher takes on a supervisory rather than instructive role, moving from team to team and assisting without testing or projecting an attitude of checking-up or trying to discipline the structure of the students’ learning process. This third stage is also the climax of the lesson design, and unlike the traditionally structured control group, for which the climax was something like a test, the learning climax for the CLIL experimental group comes at the moment of accomplishment, or the realization of the task. This moment represents the high point of both the activity itself and HOT involvement, when any incidental word knowledge could contribute to the successful completion of the lesson. The third procedural step also functions as a kind of resolution to the day’s lesson, when the students (and the teacher) privately reflect upon the experience, noting not only what knowledge they may have gained but also how that knowledge might have changed their interpersonal and cultural perspectives. As part of this reflection, the students noted the new or novelly used English words and phrases they recalled encountering (reading or hearing) and/or using during the day’s activity. These vocabulary items would then—either consciously or unconsciously—become part of the language for learning, the language scaffolding formulated to support the following week’s CLIL activity. Thus, the reflection represents the culminating opportunity in the day’s exercise for the learners’ recognition of incidentally acquired word knowledge (Table 4).

5.5 CLIL Approach Re-examination

The teaching design made use of six quality principles (Meyer, 2013). In that context, Table 5 analyzes the business planning and phone conversation ideas.

Table 5 Six quality principles
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5.6 Data analysis

The initiating hypothesis for this study was to see if the task-oriented CLIL teaching approach was better than the traditional classroom approach at significantly facilitating the chances for incidental vocabulary learning. To check the hypothesis, the study compared the two groups of participants by separately analyzing the test results from the pretest and the immediate posttest sessions via a two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and t-tests.

The accuracy rate of the theme-based vocabulary words (by percentage) was calculated for both tests to investigate whether it increased for either group after the learning activity, that is, on the posttest. The number of correct words out of 59 served as numerators of ratios with denominators being the sums of the participants’ accurate vocabulary answers. For example, if a student scored 36 words correctly, the accuracy rate is then 61%.

6 Results

Table 6 shows the descriptive statistics for the two groups. A two-way ANOVA was performed to test the presence of interaction effects for the two groups and the testing sessions (pretest and posttest) in terms of the accuracy rate. Significant interaction effects for the groups and the testing sessions were observed, F(1, 25) = 13.641, p = 0.001. This significant interaction effect indicates a difference in the accuracy rate for the two groups in the different testing sessions. Thus, to further investigate this result, the researcher analyzed the simple main effect on the accuracy rate using an independent sample t-test, which compared the two testing session results of the control group and the experimental group. A significant difference was detected on the posttest (t = −5.248, p = 0.000; d = 2.04) but not for the pretest (t = −0.123, p = 0.903, d = 0.04). The effect size for this analysis (d = 2.04) exceeded Cohen’s (1988) convention for a large effect (d = 0.80). The results suggest that the participants had a similar vocabulary knowledge of this topic at the starting point of the learning activity, but they had different learning outcomes. This difference suggests that the different approaches affected the learning outcomes. The experimental group, which received the CLIL approach, had a better incidental vocabulary learning outcome than the control group, which received the traditional approach.

Table 6 Descriptive statistics of the improvement rate between groups and testing sessions
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To determine whether any significant differences existed within each group between the mean scores on the pretest and the posttest, a paired t-test looked into the vocabulary learning outcomes between the two different testing sessions. The control group’s performance showed no significant differences between the two testing sessions (t = 0.084, p = 0.935); whereas, the experimental group’s performance showed significant improvement (t = −4.662, p = 0.000). The results suggest that the control group had less exposure to vocabulary words for this topic than did the experimental group.

In sum, the results from the independent sample t-test and the paired t-test suggested that the accuracy of the incidental vocabulary knowledge in the experimental group outperformed the control group in the posttest. Thus, the CLIL approach may have accelerated the participants’ incidental vocabulary learning chances and enhanced their memorization of the words.

7 Discussion

7.1 Effective Learning

The purpose of the current study was to investigate whether the application of CLIL as a teaching approach has any impact on the incidental learning of vocabulary when students are learning about a specific topic. The aim of the sophomore English classes established by the university is to provide a general understanding of workplace English and to promote communication skills for the workplace environment. As long as the L2 teachers keep within the broad limitations of this topic, they have the option of choosing their teaching approaches. While some may choose traditional L2 drills, studies show that learning through tasks presents similar or better outcomes (Reynolds, 2017; Sarani & Sahebi, 2012). The findings of this study show that the performance of the participants in the experimental group using the task-based CLIL approach was remarkably better than that of the participants in the more traditionally taught control group. Thus, the experimental group's significant improvement in incidental vocabulary learning ability must have been the result of using the CLIL teaching approach.

7.2 Cognition, Vocabulary and Memory

As previously indicated, cognition is principle among the 4Cs for any CLIL learning plan, with HOT being central to the students’ understanding, planning, and organizing of the CLIL tasks. Cognitive psychology research suggests that the human brain processes information, including memory, dynamically on a construct of levels (Craik, 2020). It carries out the L2 learning process in much the same way, coding, storing, using, and eventually reproducing the L2 information. This L2 mental processing includes the manipulation or processing of new word knowledge to facilitate the learning of new content (Craik & Tulving, 1975). Thus, with each cycle of content and language integrated learning, L2 information processing results in the storing of vocabulary word knowledge in the learner’s memory. Since no single encounter with a word presents its complete meaning and usage, it is likely that the storage of vocabulary knowledge continues to grow with each learning cycle.

Some studies suggest that the demands of a task govern the attention of the participants’ carrying it out. Likewise, incidental learning requires some degree of conscious attention from learners (Huckin & Coady, 1999; Newton, 2013). However, this latter awareness is awakened by the learning task, rather than the other way around. In other words, with CLIL the learner does not go looking for a task in order to apply a list of vocabulary words; rather, the demands of the CLIL task lead them to encounters with new vocabulary. The necessary attention the learner pays to these new words in order to use them effectively while completing the task leads to the storage of the word in the learners’ memory. The point is that incidental learning happens as the result of the need to know something, which is not the same thing as accidental or chance learning.

7.3 Imagery and Play

Another less frequently acknowledged aspect of cognition that CLIL calls into play is the imagination, or creative thinking, particularly during the rehearsal and execution of the CLIL activity.

Since this research and the CLIL activity associated with it were both designed in the context of a L2 learning environment, engagement with the content—the workplace or business practice—necessarily involved the imaginary activities of simulation and mental representation. If on the other hand this research and the CLIL activity associated with it had been conducted in the context of a business management class being taught in English, then it is possible that the activity could have involved a real world rather than simulated setting. In that case, creative thinking may not have played as strong a role in the execution of the CLIL activity.

Simulation and representation are imitative activities that engage creative thinking in ways that are complementary rather than inimical to critical thinking. As Aristotle has taught us, the first things people learn come to them through imitation. People take pleasure in imitative representations, and they enjoy images because they learn by looking at them (Aristotle, 1448b5-21). Thus, creative thinking is an aspect of HOT that CLIL not only engages but also possibly adds to its ability to inspire incidental learning. Equally important is the idea that creative imitative thinking also introduces a playful language learning element into the CLIL process. Caon (2020) theorizes that with playfulness in language learning “strong intrinsic motivational inducements become integrated with affective-emotive, cognitive and social aspects of the learner.” Heras and Lasagabaster (2015) have also shown that CLIL has a positive effect on these motivational and affective inducements. In particular, their research showed “that the CLIL module had a similar positive effect on both male and female students’ learning of the technical content-related vocabulary” (p. 70).

The influence of creative thinking and playful language learning on cognition in CLIL should not be underestimated. Every word and expression that a student encounters triggers HOT in the formation of concomitant mental imagery. This imagery does not only comprise mental pictures of things, but of each moment in a whole situation. As psychologist Jerome L. Singer (1973) expresses it, “there is a complex interaction between representation in the brain of material stored according to sensory modality and also material stored in terms of a summarizing verbal label” (p. 190) Thus, the imaginary situations that CLIL activities create incidentally engage L2 verbal associations that the learner uses to build their understanding of the content.

In addition, the interplay of mental imagery and verbal representation develops the learner's L2 mental lexicon, which includes not only an arrangement of words and their definitions but also something of the mental imagery that informed the learners' first encounter with this vocabulary knowledge.

Thus, the demands of the CLIL activity tasks governed the attention of the research participants. These tasks focused the participants’ imaginations on new situations that in some cases incidentally involved the manipulation or processing of new word knowledge. Processing this new word knowledge helped them construct mental representations of those situations. The results of the posttest suggest that the experimental group had successfully stored some aspects of this new, incidentally acquired, vocabulary knowledge. However, to deepen the participants’ acquisition of the new vocabulary knowledge will require further processing that involves using the new words in new CLIL tasks that engage both critical and creative HOT.

7.4 Benefits of Task-Oriented Learning

One of the factors improving incidental vocabulary learning among the participants in this study may have been that the tasks and accompanying worksheets required them to discover additional words to facilitate both their discussions and negotiations with one another. As Caon (2020) notes, this kind of “social mediation…places the student at the centre of the learning process as students are considered resources and origins of learning, actively involved in building their knowledge base” (p. 446).

In addition, the CLIL activities enabled incidental vocabulary learning to take place on an unconscious level because the students had to do some research to complete their tasks, which would naturally have exposed them to new words or known words used in a novel way. The same opportunity for incidental learning exists in the cultural aspect of the 4Cs framework because the cultural use of language, especially turns of phrase and idioms, exposes the learner to deeper aspects of word knowledge.

To complete the CLIL task, each table group had to come up with their own approach, which included imagining and then simulating the workplace context. However, in addition to their discussions and negotiations, it was essential for the learners to treat language as a key element in the actual execution of the task itself. Thus, in each phase of the activity, the learners were discovering and using words as speech acts, in which case the language itself plays a proactive role in the social mediation.

Although the CLIL tasks are pragmatic modes of learning, they are also teleological activities in which the process leads to the end goals. As Newton (2013) found in his study of incidental vocabulary learning, with communication tasks “attention is clearly related to purpose” (p. 17). Therefore, the more important a word is to accomplishing the goal, the more likely a learner will be to acquire it as the result of some task-oriented learning activity. As Newton (2013) found, “learners gave priority to what they knew or what the task required them to know and did not spend time on words that could be avoided (p. 19). Therefore, both when the learner discovers a word and how they use it during their performance of the task, play important roles in the depth of their acquisition of it.

The task-based activities of CLIL use the learning scaffolds of activity forms and worksheets that offer the participants hints and guidance for researching the language they will need. These learning scaffolds also reduce learning anxiety about falling into the unknown, much the way a building scaffold insures the safety of a worker. Consequently, these learning scaffolds focus the learners’ attention on the immediate purpose of the language they are using for not only communicative meaning but also achieving their end goals. Thus, rather than using language drills and structured practice activities, CLIL tasks place the L2 within a structured thinking and learning framework. Through planning discussions, negotiations, and the actual execution of content and language related tasks, CLIL gives learners opportunities to utilize L2 words in the simulated context of the content.

7.5 Limitations

The findings of this study demonstrate the potential the CLIL approach has for the incidental learning of vocabulary. However, the study itself had limitations. First, even though the focus of the research was on using CLIL as a teaching approach, conducting the study as part of an ongoing course limited it to regular class hours and required learning topics. Therefore, the research did not allow for the collection of further retention data. In addition, the arrangement of the CLIL tasks had to coincide with the students’ other related workplace topics.

Also, relative to the classroom situation, the students’ schedules and commitments to their major courses do not allow them the time necessary to do much out of class homework. They find out of class project work particularly onerous. This situation means that to facilitate the experience of language learning in the wild, the CLIL content had to be something they could engage in within the normal schedule of their lives. Thus, learning about the workplace was very useful in the present context. That said, it would be useful for further research to choose content more challenging to the students’ classroom comfort zone. In addition, engaging with the content in a real, rather than simulated environment would better meet the conceptual aims of learning in the wild without diminishing the imaginative element.

The research was also subject to a few other limitations. First, this study did not include a questionnaire to survey the participants’ feedback on the CLIL approach. Such a survey would have been useful as a comparative tool to the participants’ reflections.

Second, a greater number of participants in both groups would have increased the amount of usable data. Again, this limitation was the result of conducting the study within the context of an ongoing course.

Finally, one cannot really learn a language outside the context of some content. Most often, the content of language classes is superficial, because it is calculated to reinforce the L2 language learning process. In the present study, learning about the workplace was the content. But in fact, this choice was a contrivance of the existing course requirement that it should teach Workplace English. In the future, it would be advantageous to conduct the study in the context of a course in which English was not the focus of the class. For example, a journalism or a history class, or any of the STEM or humanities subjects would offer substantive content for L2 learning with CLIL. The difficulty is that L2 teachers are limited to teaching subject content about which they have acquired an intuitive understanding. In that case, perhaps it would be useful to train interested content teachers in CLIL and see if the results are even better.