CLIL: Graphic Organisers and Concept Maps for Noun Identification within Bilingual Primary Education Natural Science Subject Textbooks

Though concept maps and graphic organisers are useful tools for bilinguals to organise the information being managed and learned, its systematic use is not widened and decisive in CLIL domains. Apart from helping students to acquire meaningful learning, concept mapping might promote in them word-recognition skills for the identification and management of relevant information within foreign language (L2) texts. Hence, this article inquires into the influence of concept maps and graphic organisers as tools for noun category identification from L2 texts. Research sample comprises sixty Spanish primary education students from a bilingual school. Design is quasi-experimental, and the training programme lasted three weeks. Materials used during the training period are not exceptional, but the ordinarily found in regular classrooms. Data gathering procedure consists of the identification and circling of nouns by sample participants. As a starting point, secondary data as the intelligent quotient, learning style, and English level is collected via standardised tests. The analysis of the variance showed a highly significant interaction between the groups and the implemented texts both for noun identification (F[subscript 3.171] = 12.124, p < 0.000, [eta-squared] = 0.175), and the grammatical categories mistakenly identified as nouns (F[subscript 3.171] = 3.840, p < 0.016, [eta-squared] = 0.063).