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Article published In:
CLIL and Bilingual Education in the Netherlands
Edited by Tessa Mearns and Rick de Graaff
[Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics 7:2] 2018
► pp. 203–226

Attitudinal factors and the intention to learn English in pre-vocational secondary bilingual and mainstream education

 | Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences
 | Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences
 | Utrecht University
The effect of bilingual education (BE) on the attitude towards learning English of pupils in the first three years of pre-vocational secondary education in the Netherlands (n = 488) was investigated. Contrary to several other BE/CLIL studies, in the present study pupils choosing for a bilingual stream are not preselected based on their attitude or motivation. Attitude was measured using the Model of Planned Behavior (MPB). The best-fitting attitude model was one in which the perceived importance of learning English was a direct predictor of the Intention to make an effort, and not mediated by Affect. At the start of BE in year 1 (age 12), attitudinal differences between bilingual and mainstream pupils were non-significant, but after one or more years of a bilingual program, BE pupils scored significantly higher on four of the five MPB attitudinal constructs. BE appears to positively influence the attitude towards learning English of junior vocational students.
Keywords: Content and Language Integrated Learning, CLIL, junior vocational secondary education, vmbo, attitude, affective factors, Model of Planned Behavior, MPB, bilingual education
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Method
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Instruments
    • 2.3Procedure
  • 3.Analyses
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Discussion and conclusions
    • Limitations and recommendations
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 January 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dujal.18005.den
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