ENG513 Notes by Sajid Iqbal

Q: What is CONTENT-BASED INSTRUCTION?

Content-Based Instruction (CBI) refers to an approach to second language teaching in which teaching is organized around the content or information that students will acquire, rather than around a linguistic or other type of syllabus. Krahnke offers the following definition: It is the teaching of content or information in the language being learned with little or no direct or explicit effort to teach the language separately from the content being taught. (Krahnke, 1987, p. 65).

Q Define the term ‘content’ used in content based instruction. The term content has become a popular one both within language teaching and in the popular media. New York Times columnist and linguistic pundit William Safire addressed it in one of his columns in 1998 and noted: If any word in the English language is hot and buzz-worthy, surpassing even millennium in both general discourse and insiders, that word is content. (New York Times, August 19, 1998, 15) Although content is used with a variety of different meanings in language teaching, it most frequently refers to the substance or subject matter that we learn or communicate through language rather than the language used to convey it.

Q: Write down few programs based on content study. Other educational initiatives since the late 1970s that also emphasize the principle of acquiring content through language rather than the study of language for its own sake include Language across the Curriculum, Immersion Education, Immigrant On-Arrival Programs, Programs for Students with Limited English Proficiency, and Language for Specific Purposes.

Q: What is the role of Content in other Curriculum Designs and Content-Based Instruction?

Language skills should also be taught in the content subjects and not left exclusively for the English teacher to deal with. This report influenced American education as well, and the slogan " Every teacher, an English teacher" became familiar. Like other cross-disciplinary proposals, this one never had the classroom impact that its advocates had hoped for. Nevertheless, subject-matter texts appeared that included exercises dealing with language practice, and the need for collaboration between subjectmatter teachers and language teachers was emphasized. In some cases, curricular material was produced that integrated subject matter and language teaching goals, such as the Singaporean Primary Pilot Project in the 1970s classroom texts integrating science, math, and language study. Immersion Education has also had a strong influence on the theory of Content-Based Instruction. Q What is Immersion Education? Write a short not on it. Immersion Education is a type of foreign language instruction in which the regular school curriculum is taught through the medium of the foreign language. The foreign language is the vehicle for content instruction; it is not the subject of instruction. Thus, for example, an English-speaking child might enter a primary school in which the medium of instruction for all the content subjects is French.

Q What are the goals of an immersion program?

Student goals of an immersion program include: (1) Developing a high level of proficiency in the foreign language; (2) Developing positive attitudes toward those who speak the foreign language & toward their culture(s); (3) Developing English language skills commensurate with expectations for a student's age and abilities; (4) Gaining designated skills and knowledge in the content areas of the curriculum.

Q: Write few lines on Immigrant On-Arrival Programs. Immigrant On-Arrival Programs typically focus on the newly arrived immigrants in a country and their need for survival. Such learners typically need to learn how to deal with differing kinds of real-world content as a basis for social survival. Design of such courses in Australia was among the first attempts to integrate notional, functional, grammatical, and lexical specifications built around particular themes and situations. A typical course would cover language needed to deal with immigration bureaucracies, finding accommodations, shopping, finding a job, and so forth. The methodology of the Australian on-arrival courses was based on the Direct Method (Ozolins 1993) but included role play and simulations based on the language needed to function in specific situations. In current on-arrival programs, a competency-based approach is often used in which a teaching syllabus is developed around the competencies learners are presumed to need in different survival situations.

Q: Write a short note on SLEP. Programs for Students with Limited English Proficiency (SLEP) are governmentally mandated programs to serve especially those children whose parents might be served by the on-arrival programs, but more generally designed to provide in-class or pullout instruction for any school-age children whose language competence is insufficient to participate fully in normal school instruction. Early versions of such programs were largely grammar-based.

Q: Define LSP movement?

Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) is a movement that seeks to serve the language needs of learners who need language in order to carry out specific roles (e.g., student, engineer, technician, and nurse) and who need to acquire content and real-world skills through the medium of a second language rather than master the language for its own sake. LSP has focused particularly on English for Science and Technology (EST).

Important point to remember:

The first immersion programs were developed in Canada in the 1970s to provide Englishspeaking students with the opportunity to learn French In the United States, immersion programs can be found in a number of languages, including French, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese. Language across the Curriculum was a proposal for native-language education that grew out of recommendations of a British governmental commission in the mid-1970s. LSP/EST have given rise to a number of subfields, such as ESP (English for Specific Purposes), EOP (English for Occupational Purposes), and EAP (English for Academic Purposes).

Q: On what two principles Content-Based Instruction is based?

Content-Based Instruction is grounded on the following two central principles:

1. People learn a second language more successfully when they use the language as a means of acquiring information, rather than as an end in itself. This principle reflects one of the motivations for CBI noted earlier

• that it leads to more effective language learning.

2. Content-Based Instruction better reflects learners' needs for learning a second language. This principle reflects the fact that many content-based programs serve to prepare ESL students for academic studies or for mainstreaming; therefore, the need to be able to access the content of academic learning and teaching as quickly as possible, as well as the processes through which such learning and teaching are realized, are a central priority.

Q: Write a brief not on Theory of Language in Content-Based Instruction

A number of assumptions about the nature of language underlie.

Language Is Text and Discourse-Based

CBI addresses the role of language as a vehicle for learning content. This implies the centrality of linguistic entities longer than single sentences, because the focus of teaching is how meaning and information are communicated and constructed through texts and discourse. The linguistic units that are central are not limited to the level of sentences and sub-sentential units (clauses and phrases) but are those that account for how longer stretches of language are used.

Language Use Draws on Integrated Skills

CBI views language use as involving several skills together. In a content-based class, students are often involved in activities that link the skills, because this is how the skills are generally involved in the real world. Hence students might read and take notes, listen and write a summary, or respond orally to things they have read or written. And rather than viewing grammar as a separate dimension of language, in CBI, grammar is seen as a component of other skills.

Language is Purposeful

Language is used for specific purposes. The purpose may be academic, vocational, social, or recreational but it gives direction, shape, and ultimately meaning to discourse and texts. When learners focus on the purpose of the language samples they are exposed to, they become engaged in following through and seeing if the purpose is attained and how their own interests relate to this purpose (or purposes).

Q: Write a brief not on Theory of Learning in Content-Based Instruction

We earlier described one of the core principles of CBI as follows: People learn a second language more successfully when they use the language as a means of acquiring information, rather than as an end in itself. Regardless of the type of CBI model that is used, they all "share the fact that content is the point of departure or organizing principle of the course - a feature that grows out of the common underlying assumption that successful language learning occurs when students are presented with target language material in a meaningful, contextualized form with the primary focus on acquiring information" (Brinton et al., Wesche, 1989, p. 17). This assumption is backed by a number of studies (e.g., Scott 1974; Collier 1989; Grandin 1993; Wesche 1993) that support the position that in formal educational settings, second languages are best learned when the focus is on mastery of content rather than on mastery of language per se. CBI, thus, stands in contrast to traditional approaches to language teaching in which language form is the primary focus of the syllabus and of classroom teaching. A number of additional assumptions that derive from the core principles of CBI just discussed will now be described. One important corollary can be stated as follows: People learn a second language most successfully when the information they are acquiring is perceived as interesting, useful, and leading to a desired goal.

Q: How Students Learn Best When Instruction Addresses Students' Needs?

This principle emphasizes that in CBI, The content that students study is selected according to their needs. Hence, if the program is at a secondary school, the academic needs of students across the curriculum form the basis for the content curriculum. Authentic texts, both written and spoken, that students will encounter in the real world (e.g., at school or at 210 work) provide the starting point for developing a syllabus, so relevance to learners' needs is assured. In the case of an academically focused program, "the language curriculum is based directly on the academic needs of the students and generally follows the sequence determined by a particular subject matter in dealing with the language problems which students encounter" (Brinton et al., 1989, p. 2).

Q: What are the objectives of CBI?

In CBI, language learning is typically considered incidental to the learning of content. Thus the objectives in a typical CBI course are stated as objectives of the content course. Achievement of content course objectives is considered as necessary and sufficient evidence that language learning objectives have been achieved as well. An example of objectives in CBI comes from the theme-based Intensive Language Course (ILC) at the Free University of Berlin. Four objectives were identified for its yearlong, multi-theme program. These objectives were linguistic, strategic, and cultural. Objectives were:

• to activate and develop existing English language skills
• to acquire learning skills & strategies that could be applied in future language development opportunities
• to develop general academic skills applicable to university studies in all subject areas
• to broaden students' understanding of English-speaking peoples (Brinton et al., 1989, p. 32).

Q: What are the objectives of theme-based instructional model of CBI?

In theme-based CBI, language learning objectives drive the selection of theme topics; that is, "there are often set linguistic objectives in the curriculum, and thematic modules are selected for the degree to which they provide compatible contexts for working towards these objectives." It is possible for theme-based courses to be directed toward single-skill objectives; however, most often theme-based instruction "lends itself well to four skills courses, since the topic selected provides coherence and continuity across skill areas and allows work on higher-level language skills (e.g., integrating reading and writing skills)" (Brinton et al., 1989, p. 26).