Content-based Instruction

The focus of a CBI lesson is on the topic or subject matter. During the lesson students are focused on learning about something. This could be anything that interests them from a serious science subject to their favourite pop star or even a topical news story or film. They learn about this subject using the language they are trying to learn, rather than their native language, as a tool for developing knowledge and so they develop their linguistic ability in the target language. This is thought to be a more natural way of developing language ability and one that corresponds more to the way we originally learn our first language.

While CBI can be both challenging and demanding for the teacher and the students, it can also be very stimulating and rewarding. It is advisable to include other teachers within the school, particularly teachers from other subjects. This could help both in terms of finding sources of information and in having the support of others in helping you to evaluate your work.

Here is an example of a CBI lesson.

Choose a subject of interest to students.
Find three or four suitable sources that deal with different aspects of the subject. These could be websites, reference books, audio or video of lectures or even real people.
Divide the class into small groups and assign each group a small research task and a source of information to use to help them fulfil the task.
Then once they have done their research they form new groups with students that used other information sources and share and compare their information.
There should then be some product as the end result of this sharing of information which could take the form of a group report or presentation of some kind.
Because CBI isn’t explicitly focused on language learning, some students may feel confused or may even feel that they aren’t improving their language skills. Deal with this by including some form of language focused follow-up exercises to help draw attention to linguistic features within the materials and consolidate any difficult vocabulary or grammar points.

The advantages of content-based instruction

Students can use the language to fulfil a real purpose, which can make students both more independent and confident.
Students can develop a much wider knowledge of the world through CBI which can feed back into improving and supporting their educational needs.
It helps students to develop valuable study skills such as note taking, summarising and extracting key information from texts.
Taking information from different sources, re-evaluating and restructuring that information can help students to develop very valuable thinking skills that can then be transferred to other subjects.
The inclusion of a group work element can help students to develop their collaborative skills.

The drawbacks of CBI?

In monolingual classes, the overuse of the students’ native language during parts of the lesson can be a problem. Because the lesson isn’t explicitly focused on language practice students find it much easier and quicker to use their mother tongue.
It can be hard to find information sources and texts that lower levels can understand.
Sharing of information in the target language may cause great difficulties.
Some students may copy directly from the source texts they use to get their information.

Articles about CBI

Content Based Instruction

This paper is about Content based instruction (CBI), a teaching approach that focuses on learning language through learning about something.Although CBI is not new, there has been an increased interest in it because it has proven very effective in ESL and EFL programs around the world.

Content-Based Instruction A Relevant Approach of Language Teaching

Content-Based Instruction is an approach in which the teaching is organized around the content. Likewise, the principles of Content-Based Instruction are heavily rooted on the principles of communicative language teaching since they involve an active participation of students in the exchange of content. This article reflects upon Content-Based Instruction as a relevant language
teaching approach, its background, the definition of the concept, and its principles. Moreover, the article reports on Content-Based Instruction’s distinctive characteristics and its main models. Additionally, a Content-Based Instruction lesson plan with its materials is provided. Finally, a set of conclusions and implications is also discussed.

A short series of videos on the subject with Patsy Lightbown. Followed by her book.

Examines the challenges of learning both language and content in the same class, and reviews classroom-based research on instructional practices that can meet those challenges in primary and secondary schools.

A more complete video with Prof. Jack C. Richards on CLT