Lexical Richness in the Written Production of CLIL and Non-CLIL EFL Students: A Comparative Study

Abstract

The growth of English as a lingua franca has influenced the education system and practices in some countries, including Indonesia. CLIL (Content Language Integrated Learning) is categorized as a new approach in Indonesia that is used to promote English as a foreign language. This present study investigated the impact of the implementation of the CLIL approach by comparing the students’ lexical richness in their written production. The data of this study were collected from 46 primary six students, consisting of 23 students from the CLIL class and 23 students from the non-CLIL class. To generate the students’ lexical richness, this study used the textinspector tool to help analyze the TTR (token type ratio) for identifying the lexical diversity and lexical density, and VocabProfiler to investigate lexical sophistication. The result revealed that there was no significant difference in the production of lexical richness between the CLIL students and non-CLIL students. However, the overall results showed that CLIL students had higher scores than non-CLIL students. They produced more lexical richness than the non-CLIL group. This result indicated that the students who experienced with CLIL approach outperformed in terms of their vocabulary development than non-CLIL class. It concluded that the CLIL approach had successfully given input and exposure to Indonesian EFL primary education students yet innovation in implementing the CLIL approach in the context of EFL students was needed.