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cannot sensibly be discussed in terms of a base language, and that a better focus for research here would involveconcentration on how and when differentiation occurs in the child’s language use.

The concluding chapter provides a satisfying and substantial endpoint for the book. The author presents her view(p. 173) that the notion of ‘idiolect’ is just as relevant to bilinguals as it is to monolinguals, since bilingual individualsconstruct their own linguistic systems from the input to which they are exposed. These systems may not necessarilycoincide either with standard languages or with the language use of others within the same community. There is a callfor psycholinguistic research into CS which draws on insights from sociolinguistic investigations, and which does notfocus solely on “elite bilinguals”e those whose mother tongue is a standard language and who have acquired anotherstandard language through formal education. Finally it is noted that phonological research is under-represented in thefield of CS. Aweighty appendix, based on the LIDES (Language Interaction Data Exchange System) Project, detailsmethods of coding multilingual data.

There are a few minor typos in this edition: for example, a rogue full-stop (p. 30), a missing auxiliary (p. 91), andthe non-words ‘concensus’ (p. 7), and ‘diachronially’ (p. 4). However, these can easily be adjusted in future editions ofthis well written, informative and stimulating book. Thewriter’s command of the literature, evident enthusiasm for hersubject, and clarity of presentation carry the reader along on a wave of coherent text studded with examples of CS fromdiverse geographical and social settings. In short, this is a book which will be read with enthusiasm by students andscholars seeking a non-partisan overview of the field of CS.

References

De Bot, K., 1992. A bilingual production model: Levelt’s ‘speaking’ model adapted. Applied Linguistics 13 (1), 1e24.

Muysken, P., 2000. Bilingual Speech: A Typology of Code-mixing. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Myers-Scotton, C., 1993. Duelling Languages. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Winter, J., Pauwels, A., 2000. Gender and language contact research in the Australian context. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural

Development 21 (6), 508e522.

Brian PooleEnglish Language Institute of Singapore (ELIS), Ministry of Education,

Block P, Level 1/2, 2 Malan Road, Singapore 109433E-mail address: brianqpoole@gmail.com

doi:10.1016/j.system.2011.06.003

Language Use and Language Learning in CLIL Classrooms, Christiane Dalton-Puffer, Tarja Nikula,Ute Smit (Eds.). John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam (2011). 291 pp.

With the expansion of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) in the European educational sector, CLILhas received increased attention from researchers working in applied linguistics and other related fields. LanguageUse and Language Learning in CLIL Classrooms, edited by Dalton-Puffer, Nikula and Smit, is a recent example ofa growing number of publications on the topic (e.g. Coyle et al., 2010; Ruiz de Zarobe and Catalan, 2009), which iswell worth reading, not least because the editors have managed to gather a range of empirical studies from countries asdistinct as Austria, Finland, Norway and Spain. What they have in common is their focus on English, i.e. studies reporton data obtained in secondary and tertiary education where English is used as a medium of teaching and learning.

The volume is evidently carefully edited, slightly hampered by some accidentally inserted blank spaces (e.g. pages14, 29, 31, 32, 40). It is divided into three parts, which are framed by an introductory and a concluding chapter writtenby the editors. The first part consists of two chapters which approach theoretical issues relevant to CLIL. The secondpart comprises seven empirical studies involving 10e19 year old learners at secondary school. It forms the centrepiece of the book and affords a multifaceted insight into qualitative and quantitative aspects of language learning inCLIL classrooms. The third part focuses on tertiary education and features three studies involving adult learners

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studying through the medium of English at university and other educational centres. The studies presented areinsightful and on the whole convincing, though providing effect sizes would have enabled the reader to gain a betteridea of the significance of the statistical differences observed in the quantitative data presented.

Opening sections can be tedious, but it is definitely worth reading the editors’ introduction to the volume, whichoffers among other issues a very useful overview of the state of CLIL research (one may add Alonso et al., 2008) andan excellent discussion of underlying assumptions about language learning in CLIL. The authors align themselves toa socially constructed view of language acquisition (Kaplan et al., 2002; Swain, 2000), and stress the importance ofhuman interaction in the learning process, a leitmotiv running through the chapters to follow. A great finish to thesection is the matrix representation of themes and chapters of the volume, which readers like myself will muchappreciate.

Part I starts off with a contribution by Lorenzo and Moore who use examples of teacherestudent interaction inSpanish CLIL classrooms to reflect on the communicate gains of the approach. The CLIL classroom stimulatesauthentic discussions in the classroom, the authors argue, and makes learners interpret teachers’ questions as truedesire for content information. In a similar vain, Maillat uses results obtained in Switzerland to highlight the pragmaticeffects of the CLIL methodology. While few would probably quibble with the notion that CLIL stimulates students’use of the target language and their ability to focus on relevant aspects of learning tasks, the discussion of the maskeffect makes for a somewhat slow read; a more concise introduction would have made the argument more easilyaccessible to readers.

Part II features seven studies set in secondary schools. It is worth highlighting Huttner and Rieder-Bunemann’sinsightful report on a study set in Vienna, involving 44 adolescents learning English as a foreign language. Their datasuggest qualitative and quantitative advantages in CLIL students’ English competence. For instance, CLIL partici-pants tried harder to get the meaning across in classroom discussions, they resorted less to native language whendescribing picture stories, paraphrased where necessary and appeared in general to be more successful in thecommunicative and functional use of the language than their peers in traditional language classes. However, theauthors point out that there were high individual differences within the two groups observed, with high performers intraditionally taught classes and low performers in the CLIL classes. While the small sample size needs to be taken intoaccount when interpreting these differences, the authors’ call for systematic exploration into whether and to whatextent the CLIL methodology is beneficial to all students should not go unheard.

An interesting case study set in Finland is provided by Nikula, who observed a science teacher’s biology lessons,conducted in Finnish (L1) to 7th graders and in English (L2) to 9th graders. The teacher did not hold a formalqualification as a language teacher but had a high degree of competence in his L2 English. The analysis of theclassroom interaction revealed different patterns of teacherestudent interaction. For instance, lessons in Finnish(teacher’s L1) showed more teacher monologues, while CLIL lessons showed more studenteteacher interaction andmore frequent turn taking. Yet in Finnish classes the teacher was able to draw on a stylistically more varied languagerepertoire and to express very subtle nuances in meaning. In other words, on the positive side students appeared lesspassive in CLIL classes, and tended to use the target language more. On the negative side, the teacher’s language use inthe CLIL classes was more restricted than in the Finnish classes. Given that in many European countries teachersinvolved in CLIL are non-native speakers of the target language, the findings warrant more in-depth considerationespecially with regards to possible implications for CLIL teacher training.

Attention should also be drawn to the study conducted by Llinares and Whittaker. The authors carried outa comparative analysis of spoken and written language output by Spanish students studying history in CLIL andtraditional language classrooms. Echoing Lorenzo and Moore’s findings, Llinares and Whittaker found communi-cation in the CLIL classroom to be more genuine: CLIL classes seemed to be giving individuals more space to developtheir views and interpretation. The data nevertheless shed light on an important drawback: CLIL students seemed lessequipped to engage with the genre of writing required in history classes, for example, they displayed less registersensitivity and fewer nominalisations. However, after a longer period of exposure to CLIL, these differences maydiminish: the data indicated that CLIL students were successfully beginning to acquire the register of the discipline, aninsight which highlights the need for more longitudinal studies in the field to trace the development of students’writing skills over time.

Writing skills are also explored in Jarivinen’s study, which scrutinises essays produced by 19 Finnish teenagers inboth Finnish (L1) and English (L2). Interestingly, a stable relationship was observed between writing skills in the L1and the L2, that is, students producing low lexical density essays in Finnish also wrote low lexical density essays in

561Book reviews / System 39 (2011) 554e584

English. This finding links to the question raised by Huttner and Rieder-Bunemann as to whether the CLIL meth-odology is advantageous for all students. Teachers would surely welcome an exploration of whether and to what extentstudents who have poor writing skills in their native tongue need extra support in the CLIL classroom.

Lastly, attention should be drawn to Part II’s neat closing chapters comparing writing skills of CLIL and non-CLILstudents. Jexenflicker and Dalton-Puffer report on data obtained by a study conducted in Austria. A written test wasadministered to 86 secondary students at a technical school, 39 of whom had received CLIL tuition. The findingsshowed that CLIL students display higher writing skills in English than their peers. In other words, CLIL seemed tohave a positive effect on students’ grammar skills, vocabulary and pragmatic awareness. Although the authors arecareful in drawing conclusion given a lack of baseline data, the findings resonate with the results obtained by Ruiz deZarobe. The latter author reports on a study involving 161 students, bilingual in Spanish and Euskera, studying Englishas a third language in the Basque Country. The two CLIL groups tended to score better than their non-CLIL peers inmost aspects of written production, although statistical differences were only observed in two categories, vocabularyand content. Content, on the other hand, appeared to be unaffected by CLIL in the study conducted by Jexenflicker andDalton-Puffer, who deplore the fact that Austrian students’ essay organising skills were on the whole not very welldeveloped. The authors rightly point to the lack of emphasis on writing in content lessons in countries such as Austriaand Germany, an assertion which will probably ring true with language educators working in these countries (althoughat least in Germany the situation may vary greatly across the three-tier school system).

Part III looks at CLIL in higher education and will be much appreciated given the increasing use of English asa means of instruction at university on the one hand and the scarcity of studies on the other. I would like to drawattention to Hellekjaer’s questionnaire study which explores 391 Norwegian students’ perception of their lecturecomprehension in university courses taught through the medium of English. The study revealed that studentsencounter various problems with lecture comprehension, although not only in lectures conducted in the foreignlanguage: for instance, irrespective of the language, students felt that information was often presented too quickly tounderstand it fully. However, students on CLIL courses had significantly more trouble following the lecture due tounfamiliar words and expressions. Students’ lecture comprehension was also positively correlated with students’active use of English, such as reading and speaking. Although only weak correlations could be observed, promoting anengagement with the foreign language through extra-curricular activities is an issue that the author might have takenup in the otherwise excellent pedagogical implications section.

The volume concludes with a summary of findings and an outline of contentious issues in CLIL, closing thisinsightful volume, which will appeal to the growing number of researchers working in CLIL to whom I wouldwholeheartedly recommend it.

References

Alonso, E., Grisalena, J., Campo, A., 2008. Plurilingual education in secondary schools: analysis of results. International CLIL Research Journal

1, 36e49.

Coyle, D., Hood, P., Marsh, D., 2010. CLIL: Content and Language Integrated Learning. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Kaplan, R.B., Grabe, W., Swain, M., Tucker, G.R., 2002. The Oxford Handbook of Applied Linguistics. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Ruiz de Zarobe, Y., Catalan, R.J., 2009. Content and Language Integrated Learning: Evidence from Research in Europe. Multilingual Matters,

Clevedon.

Swain, M., 2000. The Output Hypothesis and Beyond: Mediating Acquisition through Collaborative Dialogue. In: Lantolf, J.P. (Ed.), Sociocultural

Theory and Second Language Learning. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Vera BusseDepartment of Education University of Oxford, 15 Norham Gardens, Oxford OX2 6PY, UK

E-mail address: vera.busse@wadh.ox.ac.uk

doi:10.1016/j.system.2011.06.004