Using culture beyond its borders: the use of content-enriched instruction and the effects of input enhancement on learning in high school French classes

Abstract

The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Standards emphasizes the integration of Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities within teaching. Content-enriched instruction aims at teaching linguistic forms within content and eases the implementation of the five Cs. The focus is at beginning levels and the content is a segment of a larger curriculum. Focus-on-form, along input enhancement techniques, can be a tool to facilitate the integration of grammatical and lexical forms within a meaningful content. This paper presents the data of 132 participants in second-year French high school courses. The study features the integration of form into culture through two teaching procedures: focus-on-form (with enhanced forms) and focus-on-meaning (with no enhancement). It addresses the following questions: (1) Are content (culture) and form (grammar and vocabulary) acquired through a beginning high school French content-enriched instruction lesson? (2) Which instructional technique, focus-on-form (with the support of input enhancement) vs. focus-on-meaning (with no input enhancement), affects most effectively students' learning of (and teachers' teaching of) culture, grammar, and vocabulary in the context of beginning, high school French classes? Findings point to significant differences between instructional methods and provide a substantial contribution and support to input enhancement at the high school level.