CHAPTER 6. Chunks in writing 91 METHOD PARTICIPANTS A total of 56 Dutch students (11 male; 45 female) from two cohorts were included. ey were enrolled in the same school in the Netherlands and were in their nal year of Dutch VWO (pre-university education). All students had had 6 years of French L2 instruction as part of their secondary education, so from approximately 12 to 18 years old. ey were taught by the same teacher ( rst author), who had changed teaching approaches in 2011 for the new incoming rst-year high school students. e rst cohort (N=24; 5 male and 19 female), which started in 2010 as absolute beginners and graduated in 2016, was taught with an SB approach in the Netherlands in which a great deal of L1 was used to discuss the L2. e second cohort (N=32; 6 male and 26 female), which started taking French in 2011 as absolute beginners and graduated in 2017, were taught with a new teaching approach in line with DUB principles in which the goal was to use the L2 only in class. For the rst three years of their L2 French instruction, both groups had two 50-minute lessons per week, followed by three 50-minute lessons per week in the nal three years, resulting in a total of 450 instruction hours. As speakers in the Netherlands are rarely exposed to French in their everyday lives, students were unlikely to have had any additional regular exposure to the language outside their respective classes, so extramural exposure was controlled for. SB VERSUS DUB INSTRUCTION e rst cohort received French language instruction according to two commonly used textbook methods in the Netherlands: “Grandes Lignes” (Bakker et al., 2005) in lower years, followed by “Libre Service” (Breek et al., 2003) in the nal 3 years. As in most Dutch classes, the L1 was used to explain the grammar, to give instructions and to explain activities or strategies. e L2 was used only in speci c activities in the textbook (cf. West & Verspoor 2016). Key elements of this program were the acquisition of vocabulary and grammar, accuracy in writing and a comprehension approach for receptive skills. is integrated SB program aimed at developing all skills and activities focused on the acquisition of linguistic knowledge and on the development of all four skills. e second cohort started in 2011 with a new teaching approach imported from Canada, called the Accelerated Integrated Method (AIM) (Maxwell, 2001; Arnott, 2011). e method is based on stories and from the rst day on only the target language is used both by the teacher and learners. Understanding of the language is aided by pictures and iconic gestures. As West and Verspoor (2016) noted, in this program the L2 is used
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