Content-based second language instruction and the effects of instructional interventions

Date: December 16, 2014

Place: Kansai University, Senriyama Campus, Shobunkan 502

Speaker: Dr. Roy Lyster (McGill University)

Synopsis:

Content-based approaches involve the teaching of non-linguistic curricular content such as geography or science to students through the medium of a language that they are learning as an additional language. Content-based approaches are known as effective and motivating ways to develop higher levels of communicative ability than more traditional grammar-based approaches. Whereas traditional methods focus on the mechanical workings of the languge itself, content-based instruction enriches classroom discourse in a way that provides both a cognitive basis for language learning and a motivational basis for purposeful communication. Content-based instruction, however, does not preclude language instruction and instead needs to promote its integration through a counterbalanced approach that encourages shifts in learners' attentional focus between language and content.

This talk will explore counterbalanced instruction as a dynamic interplay between form-oriented and meaning-oriented approaches to foreign language teaching. At one end of the spectrum -- in classrooms that are predominantly content-driven, counterbalanced instruction serves to shift students' attention toward language, because learners in contexts such as immersion are known to bypass much of the target language grammar as they process discourse through schematic and contextual rather than linguistic knowledge. At the other end of the spectrum -- in classrooms that are predominantly language-driven, counterbalanced instruction is designed to reorient learner's attention toward content in order to enhanve their communicative abilities while averting an overemphasis on form. This talk will draw on classroom-based research to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of counterbalanced instruction at both ends of the spectrum.

Bio:

Roy Lyster is Professor of Second Language Education in the Department of Integrated Studies Education at McGill University in Canada. He has a PhD as well as a B.Ed. and M.Ed. from the University of Toronto and an MA from the Université de Paris VII. His research examines content-based second/foreign language instruction and the effects of instructional interventions designed to counterbalance form-focused and content-based approaches. He serves on the Advisory Committees of Studies in Second Language Acquisition and The Canadian Modern Language Review and on the Editorial Boards of The Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education and Language Teaching Research. He is author of Learning and Teaching Languages Through Content: A Counterbalanced Approach, published by Benjamins in 2007.

http://www.kansai-u.ac.jp/e-linc/