Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Series editors' preface
- Preface
- I ISSUES IN ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES
- II THE ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES CURRICULUM
- Introduction to Part II
- 11 The EAP curriculum: Issues, methods, and challenges
- 12 Twenty years of needs analyses: Reflections on a personal journey
- 13 The curriculum renewal process in English for academic purposes programmes
- 14 Team-teaching in EAP: Changes and adaptations in the Birmingham approach
- 15 Does the emperor have no clothes? A re-examination of grammar in content-based instruction
- 16 The specialised vocabulary of English for academic purposes
- 17 Language learning strategies and EAP proficiency: Teacher views, student views, and test results
- 18 Issues in EAP test development: What one institution and its history tell us
- 19 Teaching writing for academic purposes
- 20 Reading academic English: Carrying learners across the lexical threshold
- 21 Incorporating reading into EAP writing courses
- 22 The development of EAP oral discussion ability
- 23 Second language lecture comprehension research in naturalistic controlled conditions
- 24 Designing tasks for developing study competence and study skills in English
- 25 Promoting EAP learner autonomy in a second language university context
- References
- Index
15 - Does the emperor have no clothes? A re-examination of grammar in content-based instruction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Series editors' preface
- Preface
- I ISSUES IN ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES
- II THE ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES CURRICULUM
- Introduction to Part II
- 11 The EAP curriculum: Issues, methods, and challenges
- 12 Twenty years of needs analyses: Reflections on a personal journey
- 13 The curriculum renewal process in English for academic purposes programmes
- 14 Team-teaching in EAP: Changes and adaptations in the Birmingham approach
- 15 Does the emperor have no clothes? A re-examination of grammar in content-based instruction
- 16 The specialised vocabulary of English for academic purposes
- 17 Language learning strategies and EAP proficiency: Teacher views, student views, and test results
- 18 Issues in EAP test development: What one institution and its history tell us
- 19 Teaching writing for academic purposes
- 20 Reading academic English: Carrying learners across the lexical threshold
- 21 Incorporating reading into EAP writing courses
- 22 The development of EAP oral discussion ability
- 23 Second language lecture comprehension research in naturalistic controlled conditions
- 24 Designing tasks for developing study competence and study skills in English
- 25 Promoting EAP learner autonomy in a second language university context
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The appearance of content-based instruction (CBI) on the language teaching scene is often traced to Mohan's, 1986 text, Language and Content. In this text, Mohan laid out the then quite revolutionary premise that language should and could not be taught in isolation from content, and that authentic content provided the richest and most natural context for language teaching to occur. Today, this premise is widely accepted, and the approach itself enjoys wide popularity.
To better understand the approach, let us examine the following three definitions of CBI:
(1) A content-based curriculum is simply one in which the basic organisational unit is a theme or topic, rather than the more customary grammatical patterns or language functions. The goal of this is to provide meaningful contexts for language learning instead of focusing on language as an object of study. At the foundation of this approach is the Krashenesque notion that acquisition is best promoted when language is presented in comprehensible and interesting communicative contexts. However, we diverge from Krashen and side with recent first language trends in reading and writing across the curriculum in the belief that instruction in higher-level language and study skills is warranted … and that such intervention can and does make a difference.
(Bycina, 1986: 13)- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Research Perspectives on English for Academic Purposes , pp. 239 - 251Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001
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