Content-based Instruction Research Articles

PRINCIPLED PRAGMATISM AND EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING: TWO FACETS OF CONSTRUCTIVISM IN ESP

The article discusses two approaches that are considered to be the most promising ones in today’s teaching of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). The two approaches in question are Kumaravadivelu’s principled pragmatic approach and the experiential learning approach. It is shown that they both help to unify into one single new paradigm the three leading paradigms in modern ESP teaching: content-based instruction, English immersion, and culture-specific target language learning. After defining each of the two approaches in ESP courses at tertiary schools, the paper proceeds to prove the authors’ leading idea that both principled pragmatism and experiential learning are a perfect match embodying two facets of a broader pedagogical approach that is applicable not only when teaching ESP (and teaching foreign languages in general) but also when teaching other disciplines, especially at the tertiary school level. This broader pedagogical approach is constructivism, which provides students with opportunities for ‘constructing’ their own knowledge and skills through practical experience in real-life or modeled activities. In this case, students acquire their knowledge and skills (including skills of communicating in the target language) as a by-product of their real-life or modeled activities, thus internalizing (appropriating) the knowledge and skills and not just learning them. The peculiarities of constructivism in ESP courses are discussed, and the guidelines are given for the practical implementation of the principled pragmatic approach through experiential learning activities in the framework of the fully constructivist ESP course (in what concerns its theoretical and methodological foundations).

Effectiveness of Content–based Instruction in Teaching Reading

This research paper examines the “Effectiveness of Content-Based Instruction in Teaching Reading.” The objective of the study is to find out the effectiveness of content-based instruction in teaching reading. This study was conducted in Shree Jalpa Devi Secindary School Kamalbazar, Achham (Nepal). The students of grade 9 were taken as the sample of the study. First, I administered a pre-test using the test items in the beginning and on the basis of the result of pre- test, experimental teaching was started. Three progressive tests were administered in the interval of seven class periods each. I taught for 25 days using content-based instruction method. The action research was conducted to find out the strengths and weaknesses of content-based instruction on teaching reading. After the completion of teaching, a post-test was administered .The results of both the tests were compared to determine the effectiveness of content-based instruction on teaching reading. Content-based instruction was found to be effective in teaching reading.

The Study and Application of Corpus Linguistics to Create Content-based Materials for Pedagogical Purposes

It has long been proved that content-based instruction affects the overall academic progress of ESL students. With the development of research and application of corpus linguistics, such materials can be better collected and sorted for pedagogical purposes. In this project, a creation of a corpus of business language was used for developing materials for the ESL class. After a process of piloting, experimenting and revising, the materials were developed based on the collected corpus. As a result, the course turned out to be effective and well received by both the instructor and the students. We believe this project could be replicated for other academic disciplines as well.

Repositioning Ghana Schools As English Language Learner Schools: Using Native And English Languages To Improve Academic Performance

This article argues that Ghanaian students’ academic performance might improve if instructors make use of their native languages and the English language (bilingual method) to provide instruction in school setting as it promotes classroom participation, engagement in learning, and the development of listening skills that improve comprehension. While there is some evidence to support this attitude, in fact, most young children do not speak English at home, and therefore, experience hardship in their learning. As a result, they are jeered and labeled as incompetent and incapable of being students. However, this article argues that students’ academic performance might improve if instructed in a bilingual setting as they will feel comfortable and confident about their learning in school. There is evidence that children underperform in school because educators abandon the traditional native languages at the onset of formal schooling in Ghana, and sometimes, the only language that students know best is their native language. Ghana’s official language is English; it applies to curriculum and instruction in public and private educational setting. The English language is vastly spoken in homes with middle income socio-economic status. With the rise of the middle class in the country, some citizens are abandoning the daily use of spoken vernacular and are speaking English at home as a rite of passage of giving their children a head start in their academic journey. English language learning approach can be useful to improve students’ English skills; however, if combined with their native language, it could effect change in education in Ghana. The English language teaching strategies must employ on content and language integrated learning, integrated content-based instruction, a focus on academic language proficiency, sheltered instruction, comprehensible input, learner-centered instruction, integrated skills approach, cooperative learning, and teacher collaboration (Calderón et al., 2015). This article employs meta-analysis of literature knowledge to advance professional practice in repositioning Ghana schools as English Language Learner Schools. Hence, English language proficiency for all students should be tasked with effective English language learning services in order to improve English language acquisition in Ghana. Keywords: Ghana, English language learner, Content and language integrated learning, Integrated content-based instruction, Sheltered instruction, Integrated skills approach, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2703-5767

Efficient strategies in course planning for low-resource minority language classes in higher education: observations from Uralic studies and the example of South Estonian

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the different types of language classes for Uralic languages in higher education contexts to derive principles in course planning for minority language teaching. As a micro-level example, a foreign language class for South Estonian, aimed at a general audience at LMU Munich, is analysed and informs the discussion of economically efficient and pedagogically effective strategies in curriculum and syllabus design for this target group. The suggested approach uses authentic media in a theme-based, content-based instruction (CBI) classroom with an integrated syllabus of text-based, task-based, and media-based syllabus types, which helps to address the needs and interests of the target group consisting of university students. This enables critical engagement with minority media, development of media literacy, and autonomous student projects on the target language. Additionally, the adoption of a positive stance towards the minority identity is advocated, making the class suitable for heritage learners and allowing for intercultural understanding between students and educators as broader goals for minority language instruction.

Content-Based Instruction in context of Language Acquisition in EFL Classroom: An Exploration

The effectiveness of teaching the English language using the subject matter in a classroom where English is taught as a foreign language is supported by a practical way of teaching in order to achieve quality education.

Integrative Teaching of Mathematics as a Means of a Forming Modern Economist

Introduction: A modern specialist in practically any field should not only possess professional expertise but also have a good command of modern computer technologies and main mathematical methods of data modeling and processing. It is employers’ requirements and, at the same time, students’ demands to receive this exact type of education. The study examines various ideas of educator-researchers striving to change the educational process to match the new goals. Meanwhile, the authors place the main emphasis on teaching mathematics. Drawing on the experience of teaching at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, the authors propose an integrative model of teaching mathematics that utilizes the contextual approach and content-based teaching. Materials and Methods: The main methods of the study are the analysis of scientific works and pedagogical modeling based on the following methodological approaches: competency-based, integrative, activity-based, as well as the concept of the zone of proximal development. The authors place special importance on the contextual approach and content-based teaching. Results: The analysis of works confirms the significance and relevance of interdisciplinary courses. The necessary modernization of the educational process and its contents is based on the integrative approach. The contextual approach is increasingly used in higher education to reinforce professional orientation. As for content-based education, it is currently used only in foreign language teaching. Within this study, the authors propose an integrative model of teaching mathematics at economics universities. To enforce the focus on the application in basic student training, the contextual approach is utilized which allows giving professional substance to the content of an educational course. The second part of the model is content-based teaching. The authors enhance its potential uses and believe that studying interconnected subjects together allows one to show common patterns and makes the educational process more efficient, intensive and mindful. Discussion and Conclusions: The relevance of having command of mathematical methods and computer technologies for multidisciplinary specialists makes it possible to generalize the creative model by adding various professional contexts.

Modified Instructional Teaching Method

Competency-based Language Teaching (CBLT) causes character education issue and its competence in facing a complex social circumstance which is quite conspicuous when implementing in national scale. Content-based Instruction (CBI) covers students and teacher proficiency that is considered not effective if the implementation does not take material and students’ different competence into account. Cooperative Language Learning (CLL) weakness shows a feasible challenging with the classroom discussion dynamics and the allotted time. The weakness shows one leads to a broad scale, the other one causes teacher and students and the last costs the practical implementation.

Boosting Intersubjectivity by Digital Video Recording Project in EFL Classes

<p dir="ltr"><span>One challenge that modern English teachers face is the how effectively design an interface that monitors output, notices weaknesses, and provides accurate feedback. The ephemeral nature of speech obstructs assessment, peer review, and self-reflection of L2 spoken output for both students and teachers. This study sought to determine if the use of video recording would help solve this problem. Using video camera in phone proved to be a great tool that offers direct benefits to learners. These benefits included providing a tangible record of what was said, a great opportunity for peers to watch the video again for detailed online feedback, and an opportunity for students to reflect on how their oral skills for improvement. This study collected data for one academic semester (16 weeks) from undergraduate students at two universities; 48 South Korean university students and 37 Pakistani university students. The data was analyzed using a mixed method approach. The data was collected in the form of participants’ speech recordings, feedback comments to their peers, self-reflection, and responses from interviews. A meticulous comparison was also provided between all of the university students’ attitudes and performances in speech classes using video recording as a pedagogical tool for peer-feedback, self-reflection, and assessment. Additionally, a comprehensive description was also provided that revealed the students’ perceptions towards recording as a tool to enhance speech skills, the effects of video-recorded in-class speeches, reflection tasks, and online peer feedback. The results concluded that learners had their speaking production skills advanced from using video-recorded speeches. This conclusion was bolstered by already existing research supporting the effectiveness and wide applicability of video-recorded speeches in content-based instruction. More importantly, the study offers some practical tools and policies for setting up a video-recording routine for speech classes. The goal of this study was to engage practitioners about collaborative learning, so they could subsequently implement this information in their own respective classrooms.</span></p><p dir="ltr"> </p><div><span><br /></span></div>

Content-Based Instruction (CBI) challenges in Turkey: Voices of high school students

CBI is gaining popularity all over the world and in Turkey. The findings of the current study have shown that language and content integration provide high school students with a clear and relevant learning background. When language is a key to substantive interactions, events have real intent and involve a sincere exchange of meaning. The current study is mixed-method research with the participants from high schools in Turkey. The themed learning helps students to strengthen their reading and writing skills as they can create schemes during the course and can adapt existing schemes to new learning situations.

підходи до формування іншомовної комунікативної компетентності майбутніх учителів іноземних мов у США

The present paper examines issues related to the evolvement of the current approaches of prospective foreign language teachers’ communicative competence development in the USA. The results of the study clearly indicate that communicative competence occupies a key stance in the structure of language teacher candidates’ professional competence, as shown by the topic’s recurrence in the standards of language teachers’ preparation and development, and also by the ongoing assessment of language proficiency of student teachers in the American universities. Based on the analysis of language teaching approaches and methods, we singled out major trends characteristic of the US foreign language education. Thus, the background paradigm reflecting the strategic aim of the sphere of language education is the communicative one i.e. language servers communication purposes. Stemming from the unique demographic composition of the American society, the educational models that evolved on this ground (bilingual, immersion) have created the necessary preconditions for reshaping language teaching approaches. The two teaching approaches that gained in popularity are the task-based language learning and content-based instruction, which rely on the concepts of the whole language approach, cooperative learning, experiential learning, and social interaction. The essence of the aforementioned approaches consists in developing language proficiency as a by-product of engaging with learning tasks and materials from different content areas. An established trend in the sphere of language education became the so-called post-method condition or the denial of existence of a universal language teaching method suitable for all language learners in any sociocultural contexts. The spread of the new approaches in language pedagogy imposes additional difficulties on language teachers, who are supposed to be able to navigate in the repertoire of teaching methods and techniques choosing the most appropriate one, and on the other hand, be well-versed in the content-areas taught by means of a foreign language.

Applying Effective Teaching Strategies in Dual Language Immersion Portuguese Classrooms

Due to the relevance of the discussions on the use of counterbalance for content-based and form-focused second language instruction, the purpose of this study is to present some pedagogical strategies to teach and reinforce the correct use of articles, gender and number of nouns in Portuguese when teaching Language and Arts (first grade) and Science (sixth grade) in the Dual Language Immersion (DLI) program in Utah. By using the learning targets concept from Moss and Brookhart (2012), students are guided to keep in mind the most critical learning outcomes for the proposed subject regarding content and language aspects. Studies from Lyster and Tedick (2014) show that there must be a counterbalance of implicit and explicit teaching of the language structure once students in immersion programs are in a school environment and not genuinely immersed in the language and culture as if they were living in the country of the target language. After applying strategies based on these authors, positive results are evident in students' speaking and writing skills.

Failure of Humanities-based Instruction to Achieve Students’ Language Goal in College English Courses

The present paper is a detailed analysis of failure of humanities-based instruction to achieve students’ language goal in college English courses. The essence of content-based instruction and the phenomenon of applying humanities-based instruction to achieve students’ language goal are briefly introduced; the reasons for the failure are analyzed; corresponding remedies are offered.

ACCELERATE NON-ENGLISH LECTURERS’ MASTERY OF ENGLISH THROUGH CONTENT-BASED INSTRUCTION

The articles aims of discussing about using content based approach in accelerating non-English lecturers’ mastery of English. Out of three main types of Content-Based Instruction, this study uses the theme-based language instruction to accelerate the non-English lecturers’ mastery of English. Therefore, the question was asked; can the content based approach accelerate the non-English lecturers’ mastery of English. This study was an action research study, where pre-test and posttest were administered to obtain the data, in addition to observation and literature study. The study is conducted in two cycles; each cycle consists of 5 meetings. The indicator of the study is that the study is completed when 75% of the lecturers were able to reach at least 75 points in the test. The pretest reveals that the average lecturers’ score is 63.50 and following the treatment using this approach at the end of the second cycle, the average lecturers’ mastery is 80.2%. Therefore, it is concluded that content-based instruction can accelerate the non-English lecturers’ mastery of English.

Cultivating Critical Thinking Skills in the Process of College English Teaching Based on Content-Based Instruction

Cultivating Critical Thinking Skills in the Process of College English Teaching Based on Content-Based Instruction

Student interaction and the role of the teacher in a state virtual high school: what predicts online learning satisfaction?

ABSTRACTAs online K–12 education continues to expand, concerns about its quality have taken centre stage. This study utilised online learning satisfaction as an outcome indicator for the success of online learning, and investigated student- and teacher-level factors that affected it among 226 high school students taking online world language courses from 15 teachers at a Midwestern virtual school in the US. Hierarchical linear modelling revealed that, at the student level, learner–content interaction was the only significant predictor of satisfaction; while at the teacher level, satisfaction was positively and significantly correlated with teachers’ adoption of pedagogical roles, but negatively predicted by their adoption of managerial ones. The findings particularly highlight the importance of content-based teaching and learning in the context of K–12 world language learning.

COMMUNICATIVE TESTING IN THE EFL CLASSROOM

While the communicative approach has come to predominate in EFL classrooms around the world, its logical corollary—communicative testing—has not followed suit as it seems it should have. Instead, teachers who use the communicative approach in their regular classes often revert to older styles of testing when it comes time for midterms and finals. This paper will define what a communicative test is and why it is a better option than older forms of testing—especially in communicative classrooms, where it is a natural partner. It will then discuss how to assess communicative tests. It will also discuss how communicative testing can be a part of a variety of learning environments Finally, it will give concrete examples of communicative tests that can be used in EFL classrooms from English for Specific Purposes to Content-based Instruction—and even in classrooms that are constrained by administrative mandates so as not to be primarily communicative—demonstrating that communicative testing can be profitably administered in almost any learning environment.

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF CONTENT-BASED INSTRUCTION IN ISLAMIC HIGHER EDUCATION

Together with the development of technology and knowledge in English Language Teaching, teaching model develops variously. There is no single model of teaching meets all the students’ needs, especially in Islamic higher education institution. Content-Based Instruction (CBI) offers a teaching model which integrates the teaching of subject matters and language skills in a class. The findings of the present research reveal the benefits of the implementation of CBI cover cognitive and affective aspect. The knowledge of the Islamic contents and foreign languages increases and the behavior gets better. However, the more substantial finding is that the implementation of CBI eases the burden of the lecturers in doing two main tasks, namely, teaching (internalizing) Islamic values and teaching language skills.

Authentic Materials For Teaching Writing: A Critical Look

Teaching writing is not easy. Writing teachers often face problems with what kind of materials suitable for the students. This paper is intended to describe 1) the theoretical relationship between Content-Based Instruction and authentic materials that can be used by language teachers to teach writing in the classroom, 2) the previous studies of authentic materials used for teaching writing, 3) the type of authentic materials which can be used for teaching writing, and 4) the advantages and disadvantages of using authentic materials for teaching writing. The method used was qualitative research focused on content analysis. The instrument used was mainly human instrument and documentation. The result of the extensive review of literature shows that 1) one of the main feature of content-based instruction is the use of authentic materials for teaching; 2) most studies in the area of authentic materials for teaching writing shows the effectiveness of authentic materials for teaching procedure texts, descriptive texts and essay writing; 3) the type of authentic materials used for teaching writing is categorized based on how it is transmitted, namely audio, visual, and printed material materials; 4) aside from having its advantages, authentic materials also give challenges for the teacher to use it for classroom teaching, among others are practicality, comprehensibility and appropriateness.

Developing an ELT Supplementary Student Book on Saprahan for Cookery Department

The purpose of this research was to develop an ELT supplementary student book on Saprahan for Cookery Department in vocational schools. Saprahan is the local traditional method of serving the dish for guests. Adopting a developmental method of research, ADDIE instructional design was employed as the phase in developing the materials. The book is intended to be extensive reading material. From the need analysis, it can be concluded that both the teachers and students need the product. Not only the product can be used in Special Menu or Food and Beverage Service as its supposedly original use, but it may also function as an English subject at school. The result of the design phase showed that the product was designed in a Content-Based Instruction philosophy. Then, the development phase successfully resulted in the production of an ELT supplementary student book on Saprahan with six units explaining general description, procedure, equipment, menus, event, and news of Saprahan. The implementation phase showed that all students were interested in the book and 81% of the students agreed that the book would enhance their learning. Finally, the experts’ assessment in the evaluation phase showed that the product was feasible and effective for students in enriching their knowledge and skills.