An Analysis of Presence in CLIL Students Writing When Defining and Exploring in Science

Abstract

[EN] This paper investigates the written texts produced by students in Year 7 and Year 10 (beginning and end of compulsory secondary education in Spain) in a content and language integrated learning (CLIL) setting in Spain, with English as the language of instruction. The students responded to a prompt eliciting the same Cognitive Discourse Functions (CDF) on the same topic in a biology course. Using the SFL concept of presence, we examine its three aspects¿iconicity (degree of abstraction or concreteness in encoding ideas), negotiability (arguability of propositions), and implicitness (how much meaning is recoverable from the text alone). Following previous studies that have applied SFL to the analysis of students¿ production of CDFs, the study compares the students¿ use of presence in the CDFs, DEFINE and EXPLORE, across levels of schooling, and relates this analysis to English and biology teachers¿ assessment of the texts using comparative judgment. Results show the onset of development in students¿ grammatical metaphors, with older learners displaying reduced iconicity, greater abstraction, higher epistemic negotiability, and more appropriate use of implicitness. DEFINE and EXPLORE differed systematically: Definitions were more factual and explicit, while Explorations exhibited higher negotiability and implicitness, though not always appropriately. Teachers¿ ratings, however, did not reflect these indicators of disciplinary literacy. We identify pedagogical implications regarding the role of concept dependency as a component of disciplinary literacy in bilingual education.