Qualitative insights and a first evaluation tool for teaching with cognitive discourse function: “comparing” in the CLIL science classroom

In CLIL research, Dalton-Puffer’s recent construct of the Cognitive Discourse Function (CDF) (2013) - a taxonomy seven cognitively and linguistically defined academic operations (such as “explain” or “define”) is now gaining increased attention useful tool to make question integration language content more tangible operational.
 However, little known about these functions’ specific nature, their teachability, possible impact on students’ L2 learning assessment. This paper aims address questions by focusing one CDF in science context, “comparing”, subtype “classifying”.
 The objective this article twofold. First, it provides developed account “comparing” based previous illustrated qualitative insights from study which secondary students learned through an explicitly CDF-based teaching approach, using representative pre- post-test examples. Second, building enhanced understanding CDF, presents evaluation for assessing performance.
 discussion compares analysis with research outlines advantages explicit CDF-teaching approach help significantly display subject contents complete, precise, way.