“To put language into their souls” : a look at traditional language-based methods and content–based instruction in teaching English

Abstract

The focus of this thesis is to take a look at traditional language - based methods and content-based instruction in teaching English. To get a better picture of how the content-based language instruction works, I observed an English teacher at a middle school in Cincinnati, Ohio. The teacher teaches language arts and modified social studies to students who have English as their second language. My research question is “How is traditional language-based teaching different from content-based instruction?“ My research points out that traditional-based methods are focused on teaching the foreign language through linguistic aspects while content-based instruction teaches the language through content matter such as math, science, social studies and language arts and it integrates all four language skills where as the traditional methods teach the skills through isolated activities.