L2 students' language-related difficulties in subject classes

The article summarises the results of an online questionnaire launched as a part of the project Language awareness in subject classes, hosted by the European Centre for Modern languages. The aim was to explore what language-related problems the L2 students have in subject classes, in what kind of situations, and how the teachers scaffold the students accordingly. The results show that the main challenges are subject-related vocabulary, whole class discussions, oral presentations, and writing coherent texts. The teachers scaffold their students by helping them with the vocabulary, asking them to help each other, and by reformulating the instructions. The study has implications for illustrating how to define subject-specific language goals and to design materials for the purpose.