Article by Anna Krulatz from ELTED Journal.
Content-based instruction (CBI), also referred to as content-based language teaching (CBLT), is an approach to language teaching in which students
are taught language through academic content. This approach has been implemented in a growing number of contexts worldwide in the last
few decades. In European contexts, a similar approach referred to as content and language integrated learning (CLIL) deals with teaching of
academic content and language in the same class. CBI, CBLT and CLIL have been argued to increase student motivation, promote cognitive
engagement, and enable acquisition of both basic interpersonal communication skills and cognitive academic learning proficiency (Lightbown 2014).
In addition, CBI has the potential to promote intercultural awareness and to prepare learners for studying and working in another language (Dale &
Tanner 2012). As the differences between the types of programs offered through CBI, CBLT and CLIL are not the main focus of this project,
nor were they highlighted in the course in which the data were collected, the term CBI will be used in the main body of the paper, while all three
terms may appear in the quotes from the data. Despite the many benefits of CBI, many foreign language teachers find it “difficult to conceptualize, design, and implement, be it in traditional foreign language programs or in
intensive content-based programs” (Donato 2016: 25). Most notably, teachers report difficulties associated with integrating academic content and language in a single lesson, as well as struggle with re-defining their own teaching identity and assuming new roles and responsibilities as CBI
teachers (Cammarata 2010a, 2010b; Dale & Tanner 2012). Because teachers’ personal beliefs about language teaching and learning are often deeply rooted in their own previous learning experiences (Vélez-Rendón 2002), the difficulties associated with transitioning from languagefocused approaches to CBI are linked to “a deeper struggle related to their difficulty in confronting and letting go of their beliefs about how languages are learned” (Cammarata 2010b: 98). The present study sought to investigate how pre-service teachers’ beliefs about CBI evolve during a semester-long course that specifically focuses on the core principles of CBI and the implementation of CBI in foreign language instruction.