Content-Based Instruction for Language Learners
Your Instructor: Kathleen Bailey
Lesson 01
Chapter 4

The Seven Characteristics of CBI: A Classroom Example (Continued)

In the previous chapter, we examined how the first three of Jourdenais and Shaw's defining characteristics came into play in a content-based course I taught. In this chapter, we will continue our extended example and will examine the remaining four characteristics.

4. Supporting learners' linguistic development
Content-based instruction supports learners' linguistic development. At the start of the course I was teaching, it was very challenging for the students to understand videotapes made for native speakers of English. However, I was able to do many things to support their learning.

For instance, before we watched a video about Yosemite, I asked the students what they knew about this park. Several students offered ideas which I wrote on the board. Others said they didn't know anything about Yosemite. However, when I showed them a picture of Half Dome, a famous granite structure in the Yosemite Valley, several students realized they did know a little about Yosemite after all. Through these kinds of schema activation activities, I helped learners prepare to watch the videos.

We also used comprehension questions, which the students previewed before watching the tapes. Learners took notes, and at the beginning of the course, I provided them with partial outlines of the narrator's key points so that they could do guided note-taking.

Students answered the comprehension questions together in pairs, and then the pairs switched partners to compare their answers. Then we discussed their answers and, if they wished, we watched parts of the videotapes again.

In these ways, students gained confidence in listening to English. In addition, the narrator's voice was different from mine, so learners were exposed to input from another speaker of English.

5. Developing academic and/or professional language proficiency
The fifth characteristic of CBI is a focus on developing academic and/or professional language proficiency. Because the course dealt with the U.S. national park system, the focus was more academic than professional.

In fact, this subject matter lent itself surprisingly well to academic language uses. For example, numerous compare-and-contrast essay assignments about the national parks were possible (e.g., comparing two different parks, or comparing the climate of the Everglades in Florida with that of Denali National Park in Alaska).

There were also many opportunities for practicing key grammatical structures. A few examples include comparatives and superlatives (the tallest trees, the highest mountains); compound adjectives (a two-thousand-foot drop from a cliff, a four-hundred-pound bear); passive constructions (was washed away, was passed into law); and various past tenses.

The students also had to complete an interview assignment. This presented excellent opportunities for learners to use different modal auxiliaries (can, could, shall, should, will, would, may, might and must). As part of the task, students interviewed someone who had visited or worked in a national park. They asked the interviewees for advice about what to do if they visited that park themselves. This request led to many statements using the modals: "In Yosemite, you must go to Bridal Veil Falls." or "You really should visit the Ansel Adams Gallery."

After the interviews, students told their classmates about the advice they had received. In this way, learners not only heard the modals used. They also used the modals themselves, along with reported speech, as they explained what they had learned.

6. Using authentic materials
In the course I taught, we used a variety of different authentic materials. In addition to videotapes, these included maps, travel advertisements, magazine articles, picture postcards from various parks, and literary selections (for example, accounts of early visitors to the Yosemite Valley).

With the lower-level learners, brochures from the parks were tremendously helpful. All park visitors receive these brochures, and they use a consistent format across all the parks in the system.

Each brochure has a map with hiking trails, streams, and roads clearly marked. There is information about dangers and health hazards (e.g., poison oak, rattlesnakes). There is also a grid that shows which recreational features are available in the park; for instance, if there is a lake, the brochure will tell whether fishing, swimming, and boating are permitted. The repeated format and clear language in these brochures provided my students with a great deal of support and information.

7. Integrating skills and increasing cognitive and linguistic complexity
Using the kinds of authentic materials mentioned in point 6 above lead to "the integration of skills, to increased motivation, and to increased cognitive and linguistic complexity" (Jourdenais and Shaw, 2005, p. 2).

The national parks course gave students hundreds of opportunities to listen to, speak, read, and write in English. They had to learn new vocabulary items and actively use their existing passive vocabulary. They had to use English interactively (in group work and pair work, in interviews, and in their research). They also did a great deal of listening and reading about the national parks.

Students also had to use study skills as well. These included note-taking, summarizing, paraphrasing, properly quoting and documenting their sources, outlining their oral and written reports, creating handouts and transparencies, and revising their written reports after their oral presentations.

Learners were challenged cognitively when we discussed controversies about managing the parks. For instance, we debated questions such as whether more roads should be put into some parks to allow more people to visit (as opposed to closing these areas to tourists). We talked about whether to put out forest fires or let them run their course. We discussed the controversial re-introduction of wolves into Yellowstone, and about increasing the landmass devoted to parks (as opposed to using it for logging, ranching, housing, etc.).

In summary
This chapter concludes our extended example of the seven characteristics of CBI, based on a course I taught about U.S. national parks. This was the first content-based course I ever lead, and I was amazed at how engaged and motivated even lower-level students were by the sustained but ever changing focus on the various parks.

Over the next few years, I received many postcards from these students as a number of them actually visited some of the national parks we discussed in the course. This experience made me interested in learning more about content-based instruction.