Dutch Passive Use in CLIL and Non-CLIL Learners: A Multimethod Study

This study examines the use of Dutch passive constructions by French-speaking L2 learners in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and non-CLIL educational settings. While prior research has documented CLIL benefits in areas such as vocabulary acquisition (e.g., Bayram et al., 2019) and listening comprehension (e.g., Nieto Moreno de Diezmas, 2018), its impact on the acquisition of more complex syntactic structures like the passive voice remains underexplored. Employing a mixed-methods design, this study triangulates spontaneous productions from the Multilingual Traditional Immersion and Native Corpus (MulTINCo) (Hiligsmann et al., 2021) with data from a controlled elicitation task. Results show that CLIL learners produce passive constructions more frequently than their non-CLIL peers but demonstrate lower morphosyntactic accuracy. Their production diverges from native patterns in agent expression, favoring medial agent placement, alongside a marked overreliance on zijn-passives and a notable absence of impersonal passives. These findings indicate that while CLIL instruction may enhance structural engagement and syntactic experimentation, it does not guarantee consistent target-like accuracy. The study underscores the importance of supplementing content-based exposure with explicit, form-focused instruction to facilitate the accurate acquisition of complex grammatical forms in CLIL contexts.