Content-based instruction
Submitted by NikPeachey on 13 August, 2003 - 12:00
In recent years content-based
instruction has become increasingly popular as a means of developing linguistic
ability. It has strong connections to project work, task-based learning and a
holistic approach to language instruction and has become particularly popular
within the state school secondary (11 - 16 years old)
education sector.
What is content-based instruction?
The focus of a CBI lesson is on the
topic or subject matter. During the lesson students are focused on learning
about something. This could be anything that interests them from a serious
science subject to their favourite pop star or even a topical news story or
film. They learn about this subject using the language they are trying to
learn, rather than their native language, as a tool for developing knowledge
and so they develop their linguistic ability in the target language. This is
thought to be a more natural way of developing language ability and one that corresponds
more to the way we originally learn our first language.
What does a content-based instruction
lesson look like?
There are many ways to approach
creating a CBI lesson. This is one possible way.
Preparation
Choose a subject of interest to
students.
Find three or four suitable sources
that deal with different aspects of the subject. These could be websites,
reference books, audio or video of lectures or even real people.
During the lesson
Divide the class into small groups and
assign each group a small research task and a source of information to use to
help them fulfil the task.
Then once they have done their
research they form new groups with students that used other information sources
and share and compare their information.
There should then be some product as
the end result of this sharing of information which could take the form of a
group report or presentation of some kind.
What
are the advantages of content-based instruction?
It can make learning a language more
interesting and motivating. Students can use the language to fulfil a real
purpose, which can make students both more independent and confident.
Students can also develop a much wider
knowledge of the world through CBI which can feed back into improving and
supporting their general educational needs.
CBI is very popular among EAP (English
for Academic Purposes) teachers as it helps students to develop valuable study
skills such as note taking, summarising and extracting key information from
texts.
Taking information from different sources,
re-evaluating and restructuring that information can help students to develop
very valuable thinking skills that can then be transferred to other subjects.
The inclusion of a group work element
within the framework given above can also help students to develop their
collaborative skills, which can have great social value.
What are the potential problems?
Because CBI isn't explicitly focused
on language learning, some students may feel confused or may even feel that
they aren't improving their language skills. Deal with this by including some
form of language focused follow-up exercises to help draw attention to
linguistic features within the materials and consolidate any difficult
vocabulary or grammar points.
Particularly in monolingual classes,
the overuse of the students' native language during parts of the lesson can be
a problem. Because the lesson isn't explicitly focused on language practice
students find it much easier and quicker to use their mother tongue. Try
sharing your rationale with students and explain the benefits of using the
target language rather than their mother tongue.
It can be hard to find information
sources and texts that lower levels can understand. Also the sharing of
information in the target language may cause great difficulties. A possible way
around this at lower levels is either to use texts in the students' native
language and then get them to use the target language for the sharing of
information and end product, or to have texts in the target language, but allow
the students to present the end product in their native language. These options
should reduce the level of challenge.
Some students may copy directly from
the source texts they use to get their information. Avoid this by designing
tasks that demand students evaluate the information in some way, to draw
conclusions or actually to put it to some practical use. Having information
sources that have conflicting information can also be helpful as students have
to decide which information they agree with or most believe.
Conclusions
While CBI can be both challenging and
demanding for the teacher and the students, it can also be very stimulating and
rewarding. The degree to which you adopt this approach may well depend on the
willingness of your students, the institution in which you work and the
availability of resources within your environment. It could be something that
your school wants to consider introducing across the curriculum or something
that you experiment with just for one or two lessons. Whichever you choose to
do I would advise that you try to involve other teachers within your school,
particularly teachers from other subjects. This could help you both in terms of
finding sources of information and in having the support of others in helping
you to evaluate your work.
Lastly, try to involve your students.
Get them to help you decide what topics and subjects the lessons are based
around and find out how they feel this kind of lessons compares to your usual
lessons. In the end they will be the measure of your success.
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