A case study on the implementation of content and language integrated learning in teaching vocabulary to young learners

Interest in teaching English to young learners has been persistently growing for some years. This is a promptly growing demand for it to be taught at even younger ages by parents who want to prepare their children with the best educational advantages. This arising interest in teaching young learners offers the schools, language courses and teachers' to find out new and special skills or approaches that has never been used before. As Content and Language Integrated Learning (hereafter referred to as CLIL) has been carried out in schools in European countries more than 15 years in order to promote learning a foreign language from the early ages. And it's already been identified as an effective teaching approach in the area of foreign language teaching. CLIL has been seen as a means of improving knowledge of vocabulary and competence in foreign language learning and teaching, and of renewing interest and motivation among school children (Coyle, Holmes and King, 2009). In Turkey's context, teaching a foreign language to young learners with the help of effective pedagogical methods is still among the difficult and stimulating tasks to be met. The aim of this case study is to explore the implementation of CLIL on vocabulary learning process of young language learners who were attending the 5th grade at Private Burç Vural Primary School in Adana. In this study Vocabulary Knowledge Scale, Classroom Observation Checklist and informal interviews were used as data collection tools. The results were discussed by content analysis and One Way Repeated Measures of ANOVA. The Findings present the contribution of the research study.