Archive Copy.
Choose Content-Based Instruction
One cannot help noticing how far the field of language education has travelled from the tradition of grammar translation used for teaching Latin, but also how prevalent it still is today. Also, foreign language learning in the Middle Ages was limited to the privileged, but this is still the case in modern days. In Korea in 2012, KOTESOL is featuring content-based instruction as a main theme. Perhaps this means that something is changing in language education. In my session, I will argue for the necessity of a paradigm change in language teaching. My goal is to stimulate a dialogue among us as to why the content-based instructional model can be a game-changer for both teachers in the classroom and students everywhere if we approach it in the right way.
Content-based instruction can help the field to finally break away from its traditional focus on grammar. To this end, I will review the history of the grammar-based language teaching model and the evolution of language teaching, and describe some current contributions to theory and practice in content-based instruction.
Biographical sketch
Clara Lee Brown, Ed.D., is Associate Professor of ESL Education in the Department of Theory and Practice in Teacher Education at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is Program Advisor of the ESL Education program. She teaches courses on content-based ESL methods, portfolio assessment, bilingualism, and action research to graduate students. Her research interests include enhancing English language learners’ academic language proficiency through content-based instruction, equity issues in large-scale statewide testing programs, and bilingual identity. She has published book chapters and refereed articles in bilingual education, multicultural education, reading, math education, social studies, and inclusion, and has been invited as a keynote speaker regionally and locally. Over the past five years, she has been invited to provide content-based instruction training to elementary school teachers in the Busan Metropolitan City Schools District in Korea. She received an Ed.D. in Bilingual Special Education from George Washington University and was a US Department of Education, OBEMLA (now OELA) fellow student.
20-20 Session
Content-Based Instruction, the Right Way
Content-based instruction is known to language teaching professionals as an approach that combines language and content. This simple description does not capture the purposeful and meaningful link between content and language that is the core of content-based teaching. Content-based instruction goes far beyond providing students with topical vocabulary of the trade or mere expository facts. In this session, I conceptualize content-based instruction as using content to provide the comprehensible input necessary for language acquisition, and I offer a new model: Content-Based ESL Instruction and Curriculum (CBEIC).
The session will focus on how to infuse content into language acquisition and will provide hands-on opportunities to practice the ways in which content is integrated for the purpose of language acquisition
