Students’ motivation for content and language integrated learning and the role of programme intensity

ABSTRACTThe study of motivation in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) contexts has hitherto one-sidedly been concerned with motivation to learn the foreign language, without regard for CLIL’s eponymous focus on the inextricable connection between language and content. To fill this gap, this article focusses on CLIL learners’ motivation not only towards the foreign language, but towards both content and language learning as an integrated construct, termed ‘CLIL motivation’. To this end, 157 secondary education students enrolled in two bilingual tracks of differing intensity (High- versus Low-intensity) were compared in terms of their CLIL motivation. The results show that participation in either the High- or Low-intensity track has a significant effect on both enjoyment of CLIL and the perception of its usefulness for future purposes. These differences are further discussed in terms of students’ foreign language proficiency and academic achievement.