Is this content-based language teaching? PDF20151110-24391-1CLLRSC

Title	Is this content-based language teaching?
Author	Angela Creese
Pages	17
File Size	151.3 KB
File Type	PDF20151110-24391-1CLLRSC
Total Downloads	5
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Summary

Linguistics and Education 16 (2005) 188–204 Is this content-based language teaching? Angela Creese ∗ School of Education, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom Abstract Much of the content-based language teaching (CBLT) literature describes the benefits to be gained by integra...

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Linguistics and Education 16 (2005) 188–204 Is this content-based language teaching? Angela Creese School of Education, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom Abstract Much of the content-based language teaching (CBLT) literature describes the benefts to be gained by integrating content with language teaching aims and rejects the formal separation between 'content' and 'language' as a pedagogic necessity for language learning. This paper looks at interactions in classrooms in English schools where educational policy indirectly adopts a CBLT approach. Through a focus on the dis- courses of collaborating teachers in secondary school classrooms, the paper analyses teachers' and students' interactions within their wider socio-political context. It fnds that language work in the content classroom is given little status when set alongside other knowledge hierarchies supported by wider societal and education agendas. Data from a year-long ethnography in three London secondary schools is used to explore how teachers and students manage the content and language interface in a subject-focused classroom. The ensuing discussion considers issues such as the confation and separation of language and curriculum learning aims within teacher–student interactions and classroom texts. It explores the pedagogic consequences of shifting between the dual aims of subject and language learning and investigates how texts become transformed as teachers and students attempt to meet both sets of aims. It also considers wider societal pressures on classroom interactions and teaching texts in the shifting between language and content aims in English multilingual classrooms. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Teaching; Content; Multilingual education; English as an additional language 1. Introduction In England, content-based language learning and language-based content learning are pre- sented as dual aims for bilingual children (DES, 1985). In many ways these aims are confated in the classroom. Educational policy argues that placing bilingual children in the mainstream, Tel.: +44 121 414 4842; fax: +44 121 414 4865. E-mail address: [email protected]. 0898-5898/$ – see front matter © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.linged.2006.01.007...