Abstract

My empirical mixed-method project seeks to investigate the relationship between higher order thinking skills and academic language proficiency in English as reflected in bilingual (CLIL) learners’ oral output.

This talk will start with a brief introduction of my project providing some details about the research questions, methods and analysis procedure. I will then discuss some preliminary findings on the interplay of thinking skills and language in the output of eleven pupils following a bilingual programme in Romania. Specifically, this research seeks to explore which type of thinking skills (i.e. lower or higher order) the CLIL approach engenders in the learners, as different from the EFL and to find patterns in learners’ use of higher-order thinking skills when prompted to do so during the purpose-built tasks.