Content-Based College ESL Instruction

Loretta F. Kasper, Marcia Babbitt, Rebecca William Mlynarczyk, Donna M. Brinton, Judith W. Rosenthal

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 1999
• Print ISBN: 9781138155053
• eBook ISBN: 9781135675233
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book is carefully designed to inform and train readers in the techniques of content-based ESL instruction and to assist them in developing and implementing content-based materials and programs appropriate to their educational institutions and situations. Every chapter presents a balance of theory and practice, focusing on a detailed description, with clear examples of classroom practices including information, suggestions, and instructional tools. Each chapter addresses assessment issues as they apply to the particular methodology described.

I
Laying the Groundwork for a Content-Based Pedagogy

1
Content-Based College ESL Instruction

Theoretical Foundations and Pedagogical Applications

Loretta F.Kasper
Kingsborough Community College/CUNY

Being successful in an English-speaking academic environment requires that ESL students be both functionally and academically literate, that they be able to use English to access, understand, articulate, and critically analyze conceptual relationships within, between, and among a wide variety of content areas. It is the basic premise of this volume of essays that content-based instruction (CBI) enables college English as a Second Language (ESL) students to develop and refine these necessary literacy skills. Through planned, purposeful, and academically based activities that target linguistic and critical thinking skills and engage students in meaningful and authentic language processing, CBI fosters a functional language learning environment that goes beyond simply presenting information in the second language. This functional language-learning environment offers ample opportunities for students to use English to gather, synthesize, and evaluate information (Pally, 1997) as it teaches them appropriate patterns of academic discourse and sociolinguistic conventions relating to audience and purpose (Soter, 1990).

This chapter describes the theoretical foundations and pedagogical applications of CBI in college ESL programs. The theoretical foundations of CBI, as well as the method itself, are interdisciplinary in nature, deriving from second language acquisition research and cognitive learning theory. The pedagogical applications of these theories result in meaningful and relevant contexts for language use, enabling students to develop the functional and academic literacy skills necessary for success in college.

THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS

The linguistic and cognitive theories that provide the foundation for CBI each emphasize the importance of providing multiple opportunities for ESL learners to interact with authentic, contextualized, linguistically challenging materials in a communicative and academic context. These theories view second language acquisition (SLA) as a complex cognitive act, in which prior knowledge and strategy use are both critical to success.

Krashen’s Comprehensible Input Hypothesis

In his SLA theory, Krashen (1985) posited that two factors, learning and acquisition, are involved in the development of second language skill. Learning refers to the process of gaining formal knowledge about language through explicit instruction in linguistic forms and structures. Acquisition is a process similar to that which occurs with a first language—language is acquired as it is used as the medium for learning other things. Because Krashen (1982, 1985) believed that similar processes underlie first (L1) and second (L2) language acquisition, he asserted that the focus of SL instruction should be on meaning rather than on form.

Krashen (1982, 1985) stated that language structures are most efficiently acquired when presented through comprehensible input that is just beyond the learner’s current proficiency level, thereby forcing him or her to reach beyond the linguistic input and use previous knowledge and communicative context to glean the meaning of unfamiliar structures. Thus, Krashen’s model provides a theoretical foundation for content-based ESL courses that offer students contextualized language curricula built around meaningful, comprehensible input through which not only language, but also information, is acquired (Brinton, Snow, & Wesche, 1989). Language acquisition is further facilitated and motivation increased if the information acquired is highly relevant to students’ personal and educational goals (Snow, Met, & Genesee, 1989).

Cummins’ Two-Tiered Skill Model

Whereas Krashen emphasized meaningful, comprehensible input as key to effective SLA, Cummins (1981) asserted that becoming proficient in a second language involves a two-tiered model of skill acquisition. At the first tier, the learner acquires what Cummins called basic interpersonal language skills. These basic interpersonal, or functional literacy, skills involve the ability to converse with others and to articulate needs in the L2, and according to Cummins, can be developed within 1 to 211 years. In contrast, the second tier, called cognitive academic language proficiency, involves the acquisition of academic literacy skills, that is, the ability to use the L2 both to understand complex, often decontextualized linguistic structures, and to analyze, explore, and deconstruct the concepts presented in academic texts. Cummins stated that it may take as many as 5 to 7 years to fully master cognitive academic language proficiency.

The distinction between proficiency in basic interpersonal communication and cognitive academic language is critical to the needs of the college ESL student, who must become not only functionally, but also academically literate, and who must be able to use English not just as a means to converse and communicate, but also as a vehicle for learning, articulating, and analyzing information from a variety of academic disciplines (Clair, 1994). Cummins argued that learners cannot acquire cognitive academic language skills from everyday conversation; developing these cognitive skills requires task-based, experiential learning typified by students’ interactions with contexts, tasks, and texts that present them with complex interdisciplinary content. Thus Cummins’ model provided another theoretical foundation for the type of task-based experiential learning that is such an integral part of content-based college ESL instruction.

Cognitive Learning Theory

Both Krashen’s and Cummins’ theories suggest that SLA is a complex cognitive task. If SLA is viewed as such, the principles of cognitive learning theory should be applied when developing ESL instructional methodology. Although a full discussion of cognitive learning theory is beyond the scope of this chapter, its basic principles may be considered as offering support for the CBI model.

Basic to cognitive learning theory is the belief that learning is developed througha series of stages (Anderson, 1983, 1985). Learning begins with an instructional or study phase, called the cognitive stage, in which the learner gradually develops a rough mental representation of task requirements. The learner refines and strengthens this representation in the second associative stage of learning but still consciously attends to rules and sometimes needs outside support when performing the task. In the third stage of learning, the autonomous stage, the task representation is increasingly refined, and the learner is now able to perform the task automatically and autonomously. Cognitive learning theory maintains that for students to progress through these stages, they require extensive practice and feedback, as well as instruction in the use of various learning strategies. Only when these conditions are met will learners develop sufficient proficiency to be able to function on an autonomous level in the learning environment.

O’Malley and Chamot (1990) applied the principles of cognitive learning theory to L2 pedagogy. Their learning model, the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA), relies heavily on a cognitive principle called scaffolding, “the provision of extensive instructional supports when concepts and skills are being first introduced and the gradual removal of supports when students begin to develop greater proficiency skills, or knowledge” (Chamot & O’Malley, 1994, p. 10). These researchers advocate using materials drawn from major content areas (e.g., science, history) to develop academic language skills and to provide direct instruction in learning strategies. Chamot and O’Malley believe that this type of instructional program maximizes ESL students’ acquisition of both language and content knowledge.

Content-based assignments lend themselves well to scaffolding (see e.g., Kasper, chap. 11, this volume). Students begin with structured tasks that guide them step-by-step through the process of gathering, evaluating, and synthesizing information. These tasks are designed to provide challenging linguistic input and to teach various learning strategies. As students become familiar with effective learning strategies and techniques, they are encouraged to explore topics in a less structured and more self-directed manner. Thus content-based learning tasks that incorporate scaffolding provide the context for students to progress naturally through the cognitive, associative, and autonomous stages of learning.

READING AND WRITING AS COGNITIVE CONSTRUCTS

When SLA is viewed as a cognitive act, and the principles of cognitive learning theory are applied to it, linguistic skills such as reading and writing become cognitive constructs. Viewing them this way implies that both are selective, active, and strategic acts. Furthermore, this view suggests that reading and writing interact to build knowledge that can then be used to facilitate performance in future reading and writing tasks.

Reading as a Cognitive Task

A cognitive view of reading holds that readers do not receive information from individual texts; rather, they approach reading in the context of the entire world of their experience. This view of reading implies that information does not create comprehension; instead comprehension depends on prior knowledge. As a cognitive function, reading requires the activation of strategies for how to approach text content, along with appropriate relevant schemata, or background knowledge, for how to interpret that content. Comprehension takes place through the process of elaborating and integrating new information into the existing knowledge network. The cognitive act of reading is therefore a dynamic, recursive, integrated process through which the reader continuously constructs the world and then continuously verifies and/or modifies that construct on the basis of new incoming information.

In terms of a cognitive theory of reading, readers use preexisting knowledge to create a cognitive map that guides their construction of meaning. ESL students may experience comprehension problems either because they lack the schemata that native speakers fluently use to make meaning out of text, or because they apply inappropriate schemata and misunderstand the text (Bransford & Johnson, 1972). Thus, a faulty cognitive map for constructing meaning may cause L2 learners to lose their way in their attempts to comprehend English language texts. Helping students develop appropriate and varied schemata can solve this problem and increase comprehension.

From a cognitive point of view, academic content is a critical factor in increasing reading comprehension because such content buil...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface Content-Based College ESL Instruction: An Overview
• I Laying the Groundwork for a Content-Based Pedagogy
• II Building English Language Skills Through Content-Based Instruction
• III Incorporating Technology Into Content-Based Instruction
• About The Authors
• AUTHOR INDEX
• SUBJECT INDEX