Enhancing Beginning Language Courses Through Content‐Enriched Instruction

Abstract

In the traditional foreign language curriculum, content‐based instruction (CBI) is postponed until at least the second year of study when, it is perceived, learners have the necessary linguistic repertoire with which to begin to deal with content. The author's analysis of 12 first‐year college‐level Spanish textbooks reveals that, in general, little cultural or real‐world information is provided to beginning learners. The purpose of this paper is to describe a variation of CBI for beginning‐level language learners called content‐enriched instruction (CEI). In CEIan emphasis is placed on cultural and real‐world information. Vocabulary, grammar, and content are integrated to reflect a specific theme or converge to represent a specific topic. Learners use Spanish to acquire new information and to relate new content knowledge to their own lives. All new information is designed to meet appropriate linguistic, cognitive, and affective needs of the learner. To illustrate the uses and benefits of CEI, the author describes a unit lesson plan for six class periods and offers suggestions on how to implement CEI.

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

“…This part contained information on music and art, and provided activities for most of the period. The organization of the lesson plan roughly followed Ballman's (1997) suggestion with four main sections. Setting the stage consisted of a short warm-up with recommended questions for the teachers to ask their class to bring attention to their background knowledge of the Maghreb and Morocco (day 1).…”

“…Ballman (1997) proposed a lesson plan layout focused on a cultural topic to guide teachers in their content and language presentations: setting the stage, providing input, guided participation, and extension activities. Linguistic features, such as grammatical and lexical ones, are fully integrated within the cultural focus.…”

“…Content-enriched instruction (CEI) is a way to combine most standards while still covering language forms, particularly in beginning courses (Ballman 1997;Grim 2008aGrim , 2008bGrim , 2010Grim , 2012Redmond and Hoag 2003). Founded on the concept of the well-established, content-based instruction Á which incorporates language within content, such as literature, social sciences, and psychology (Cook 1996(Cook , 2001Met 1991;Musumeci 1993;Pica 2002;Savignon 1997;Snow and Brinton 1997;Swain 1985Swain , 1991Swain , 1996Swain , 2001Swain and Lapkin 2000) Á CEI is used to teach language within content on a daily level: the focus is often at beginning levels and the content is a segment of a larger curriculum, rather than the core subject of the course.…”

Developing a CLIL textbook evaluation checklist

“…The relevance of cultural competence (one of the four Cs of the CLIL approach) is also noticed: "Studies comparing various CLIL-textbooks have shown that the cultural dimension has not been properly exploited yet" (Meyer, 2010, p. 20). On this respect, experts also observe the lack of connection between course books and learners' lives (Ballman, 1997); this lack of connection hinders significant learning.…”

An investigation into CLIL-related sections of EFL coursebooks: issues of CLIL inclusion in the publishing market

“…Similarly, Moirano (2012) examined three coursebooks used in three different secondary schools in Argentina and concluded that topics were usually related to daily life and culture-related topics were associated to the USA or UK or did not address Argentinian students' cultural needs and context. This may show that inner circle countries (Rajagopalan 2004) are still portrayed as cultural and linguistic models in ELT, and that publishers, as Ballman (1997) claims, need to produce coursebooks which are contextualised in learners' experiences. Tomlinson (2012) adds that global coursebooks are not cognitively engaging or relevant for the contexts in which they are used.…”