Content-Based Second Language Instruction by Donna M. Brinton

Abstract

REVIEWS Content-Based Second Language Instruction by Donna M. Brinton, Marguerite Ann Snow, and Marjorie Bingham Wesche. New York: Newbury House, 1989. Reviewed by John Clegg Ealing College of Higher Education necessary to talk about content-based language teaching? One of the main things people do with language is express propositions about the world. Language is normally used to talk or write about things, and in educational contexts it is often about bodies of knowledge. How is it possible, then, to teach language which is about nothing in particular? Alas, as we all know, contentless language teaching is all too common. It has been a long struggle to establish the idea of meaningful communication within the major traditions of foreign language teaching; and even within these communicative traditions, what students are asked to talk about is still not as important to teachers and materials writers as why they should communicate and how they should form their utterances. In most foreign language teaching, content is just not a primary determinant of syllabus design is it Why in the way that function is and structure are. not to say that content-based language teaching does not exist. As the authors of Content-Based Second Language Instruction point out, it has its vigorous traditions: some communicative general-purpose EFL work— especially at post- intermediate level— has a content-led syllabus; domain knowledge is also a central component in much of ESP. More interestingly, from the educational point of view, second language learning for children in nursery, primary, and secondary education, whose home language is not the medium of instruction, is in the U.K. and many other parts of the world becoming content-led. As the education of ethnolinguistic minority pupils is relocated from withdrawal classes This Issues in Applied Linguistics Regents of the University of CaUfomia Vol. ISSN 1050-4273 No. 2 1990 253-293