The Implementation of Content-based Instruction

Stryker and Leaver (in Herrero, 2005: 4-5) state that in order to successfully implement a CBI curriculum, the following characteristics must be presented (http://revista.inie.ucr.ac.cr/articulos/2-2005/archivos/oral.pdf ):

a. Subject Matter Core

In CBI, content is the point of departure or organizing principle of the course – a feature that grows out of the common underlying assumption that successful language learning occurs when students are presented with target language materials in a meaningful, contextualized form with the primary focus on acquiring information.

b. The use of authentic language and texts

The learning activities in CBI should focus on understanding and conveying meaningful messages and accomplishing realistic tasks using authentic language. The content can be fun, academic, local, or school-based. It may include texts, videotapes, audio recordings, mini-lectures, field trips, community resources, student knowledge, web resources and visual aids (posters, maps, bulletin boards) selected mostly from those produced for native speakers of the language (Stoller 2004, Stryker and Leaver (1997: 8).

c. Appropriate to the needs of specific students

In CBI, the content and learning activities correspond to the linguistic, cognitive, and affective needs of the students and are appropriate to their professional needs and personal interests. Since students have different learning styles, teachers should provide a variety of task types, develop a wide range of learning strategies, and use different grouping techniques to make the materials accessible to all the students in the classroom.

Students should also be given participation in choosing topics and activities to better meet their needs and interests. “Student-generated themes and activities create an

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atmosphere in which the students take responsibility for their own learning and the teacher becomes more of a ‘manager of student learning’” (Maly, 1993: 41 in Stryker and Leaver, 1997: 11)

Moreover, Richard and Rodger (2001: 219) said:

“Since Content-Based Instruction refers to an approach rather than a method, no specific techniques or activities are associated with it. At the level of procedure, teaching materials and activities are selected according to the extent to which they match the type of program it is.”

Richard and Rodger (2001: 28) suggest that CBI is the extension of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), theoretically, the techniques or activities used in CLT can also be applied in the CBI as they share the same goals that are to develop learners’

communicative competence.

According to Richard and Rodger (2001: 13-19), there are many different types of activity used in CLT:

a. Activities focusing on fluency 1) Reflect natural use of language 2) Focus on achieving communication 3) Require meaningful use of language

4) Require the use of communication strategies 5) Produce language that may not be predictable 6) Seek to link language use to context

b. Activities focusing on accuracy 1) Reflect classroom use of language

2) Focus on the formation of correct examples of language 3) Practice language out of context

4) Practice small samples of language

5) Do not require meaningful communication 6) Choice of language is controlled

c. Information-gap activities

This refers to the fact that in real communication people normally communicate in order to get information they do not possess. This is known as an information-gap. More

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authentic communication is likely to occur in the classroom if students go beyond

practice of language forms for their own sake and use their linguistic and communicative resources in order to obtain information.

d. Jig-saw activities

These are also based on the information-gap principle. Typically the class is divided into groups and each group has part of the information needed to complete an activity. The class must fit the pieces together to complete the whole. In so doing they must use their language resources to communicate meaningfully and so take part in meaningful communication practice.

e. Other activity types in CLT

Many other activity types have been used in CLT, among which are the following:

1) Task-completion activities: puzzles, games, map-reading and other kinds of classroom tasks in which the focus was on using one’s language resources to complete a task.

2) Information gathering activities: student conducted surveys, interviews and searches in which students were required to use their linguistic resources to collect information.

3) Opinion-sharing activities: activities where students compare values, opinions, beliefs.

4) Information-transfer activities: these require learners to take information that is presented in one form, and represent it in a different form.

5) Reasoning gap-activities: these involve deriving some new information from given information through the process of inference, practical reasoning etc.

6) Role-plays: activities in which students are assigned roles and improvise a scene or exchange based on given information or clues.

C. Rationale

The review of related theories functions as the base to make rationale. Rationale represents the relationship between variables stated in the review of related theories.

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Among the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), speaking is often regarded by people as the most important skill. People, who can listen, read and write, but cannot speak will not be thought as mastering the English language. This case especially occurred during the working filed.

However, the researcher observed and recognized that the speaking ability of students in class 0902 in the Business English Department of CsV&TC, China was still low and unsatisfying. The students’ difficulties in speaking are caused by: the lack of related vocabularies, low ability in constructing sentences and utterances, poor and unsatisfying understanding about transactional and interpersonal expressions in English, and low motivation in participating in speaking activity caused by the shyness and embarrassment in making mistakes.

The situation was getting worse by the teacher’s wrongly chosen teaching material and unsuitable teaching method which made the students felt very bored and lost interest in the speaking class. In the class, the teacher often conducted the speaking activity by asking the students to read or translate the story or novel that the students didn’t like and had already read in their dormitory. Moreover, the teacher didn’t explore students’

potential for speaking as she didn’t provide many chances to the students to speak. The class was teacher-centered, it was the teacher who talked a lot and dominated the class.

As the problems mentioned above, approach or method need to be used to improve the situation urgently. Content-based Instruction is considered and recommended as a useful and practical approach to improve the students’ speaking skill based on the following rationale:

To begin with, Content-based Instruction provides a natural context for using the target language in the classroom; it provides the students to acquire the language while using the context of any subject matter so that students learn the language by using it within the specific context. In other words, the students will not only learn the particular context of a subject matter by using the English, but also learn the particular language terms and skills through the specific context. As we know that different contents in different texts can be used for different purposes. Communicative content-based texts will be used to train students’ communicative or speaking skills. In this study, the writer will use communicative content-based teaching materials to improve the student’s

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speaking skill. Through the Content-based Instruction, the students will be provided with many useful and practical vocabularies and sentence patterns related to their future career.

Furthermore, Since CBI is an approach, rather than a method, different technique or activities can be applied in the class to meet and suite the students’ needs; in the CBI class, students will have a lot of chances to speak English and to interact with each other in conducting different tasks or activities. By frequently practicing, the students will have the ability to speak fluently and confidently.

Moreover, the Content-based Instruction will encourage the students to actively engage in the teaching and learning process as the contents fall under their interests and the topics of the content occurred mostly in the real-world are familiar to them. That will make them talk much and frequently.

D. Hypothesis

Based on the analysis of the problem, the description of the related theories, and the rationale above, the formulated hypothesis is that Content-based Instruction can improve the students’ speaking ability of Business English Department of CsT&VC.

CHAPTER III