My research

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Storytelling for improving English Skills

Storytelling for improving English Skills


Our colorful world

Monster shopping trip

Record breakers

Jack and the beanstalk 

The princess and the dragon

Song for improving English Skills

Song for improving English Skills

Head Shoulders Knees And Toes

weather song

people song

The Finger Family (Daddy Finger) | nursery rhymes & children songs with lyrics | muffin Te The Finger Family songs

Teaching Writing Skill

Teaching Writing

Teaching Writing in the EFL Classroom

We have created a podcast to complement this page.  You can download it from our podcast page.

Basic Concepts:

Teaching writing is often about teaching grammar.  If grammar comes up anywhere in EFL, it is in the writing classroom.  Most EFL students will have some writing skills when you get them.  But they will often have an idea that their writing is quite good and generally it will be quite poor.

Many EFL students will have had some experience with paragraph and essay writing, but, in fact, they often will have quite poor writing skills at the sentence level.  Therefore, you will need to take them back to sentence level and begin to teach them very basic structure and how to write simply.  Run-on and fragmented sentences will be very common until you correct those errors.

The more basic you get with your writing students, the better.  Once a good foundation is built, you can move on to basic paragraph writing and on to essays.  These skills take time to develop though and you will find that most textbooks will move your students forward too quickly.

Example of teaching Writing

Writing Plan

Unit: Myself Topic: Personal Information M.1writing download

Teaching Reading Skill

Teaching Reading

Traditionally, the purpose of learning to read in a language has been to have access to the literature written in that language. In language instruction, reading materials have traditionally been chosen from literary texts that represent "higher" forms of culture.

This approach assumes that students learn to read a language by studying its vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure, not by actually reading it. In this approach, lower level learners read only sentences and paragraphs generated by textbook writers and instructors. The reading of authentic materials is limited to the works of great authors and reserved for upper level students who have developed the language skills needed to read them.

The communicative approach to language teaching has given instructors a different understanding of the role of reading in the language classroom and the types of texts that can be used in instruction. When the goal of instruction is communicative competence, everyday materials such as train schedules, newspaper articles, and travel and tourism Web sites become appropriate classroom materials, because reading them is one way communicative competence is developed. Instruction in reading and reading practice thus become essential parts of language teaching at every level.

Reading Purpose and Reading Comprehension

Reading is an activity with a purpose. A person may read in order to gain information or verify existing knowledge, or in order to critique a writer's ideas or writing style. A person may also read for enjoyment, or to enhance knowledge of the language being read. The purpose(s) for reading guide the reader's selection of texts.

The purpose for reading also determines the appropriate approach to reading comprehension. A person who needs to know whether she can afford to eat at a particular restaurant needs to comprehend the pricing information provided on the menu, but does not need to recognize the name of every appetizer listed. A person reading poetry for enjoyment needs to recognize the words the poet uses and the ways they are put together, but does not need to identify main idea and supporting details. However, a person using a scientific article to support an opinion needs to know the vocabulary that is used, understand the facts and cause-effect sequences that are presented, and recognize ideas that are presented as hypotheses and givens.

Reading research shows that good readers

Read extensively

Integrate information in the text with existing knowledge

Have a flexible reading style, depending on what they are reading

Are motivated

Rely on different skills interacting: perceptual processing, phonemic processing, recall

Read for a purpose; reading serves a function

Reading as a Process

Reading is an interactive process that goes on between the reader and the text, resulting in comprehension. The text presents letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs that encode meaning. The reader uses knowledge, skills, and strategies to determine what that meaning is.

Reader knowledge, skills, and strategies include

Linguistic competence: the ability to recognize the elements of the writing system; knowledge of vocabulary; knowledge of how words are structured into sentences

Discourse competence: knowledge of discourse markers and how they connect parts of the text to one another

Sociolinguistic competence: knowledge about different types of texts and their usual structure and content

Strategic competence: the ability to use top-down strategies (see Strategies for Developing Reading Skills for descriptions), as well as knowledge of the language (a bottom-up strategy)

The purpose(s) for reading and the type of text determine the specific knowledge, skills, and strategies that readers need to apply to achieve comprehension. Reading comprehension is thus much more than decoding. Reading comprehension results when the reader knows which skills and strategies are appropriate for the type of text, and understands how to apply them to accomplish the reading purpose.

Example of teaching Reading

Reading Plan

Unit: General Information Topic: Food M.3 Reading download

Teaching Speaking Skill

Teaching Speaking

Many language learners regard speaking ability as the measure of knowing a language. These learners define fluency as the ability to converse with others, much more than the ability to read, write, or comprehend oral language. They regard speaking as the most important skill they can acquire, and they assess their progress in terms of their accomplishments in spoken communication.

Language learners need to recognize that speaking involves three areas of knowledge:

Mechanics (pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary): Using the right words in the right order with the correct pronunciation

Functions (transaction and interaction): Knowing when clarity of message is essential (transaction/information exchange) and when precise understanding is not required (interaction/relationship building)

Social and cultural rules and norms (turn-taking, rate of speech, length of pauses between speakers, relative roles of participants): Understanding how to take into account who is speaking to whom, in what circumstances, about what, and for what reason.

In the communicative model of language teaching, instructors help their students develop this body of knowledge by providing authentic practice that prepares students for real-life communication situations. They help their students develop the ability to produce grammatically correct, logically connected sentences that are appropriate to specific contexts, and to do so using acceptable (that is, comprehensible) pronunciation.

Example of teaching Speaking

Speaking Plan

Unit: My Daily Life Topic: At home

Sub-topic: Free Time Activities P.3 speaking download

Teaching CLIL

Content and Language Integrated Learning  (CLIL)

What is CLIL?

CLIL aims to introduce students to new ideas and concepts in traditional curriculum subjects (often the humanities), using the foreign language as the medium of communication - in other words, to enhance the pupils' learning experience by exploiting the synergies between the two subjects. This is often particularly rewarding where there is a direct overlap between the foreign language and the content subject — eg Vichy France, Nazi Germany, the Spanish Civil War.

How does the CLIL approach benefit pupils?

Although it may take a while for pupils to acclimatise to the challenges of CLIL, once they are familiar with the new way of working, demonstrably increased motivation and focus make it possible (and likely) that they will progress at faster-than-usual rates in the content subject, providing that the principles of CLIL teaching are borne in mind during planning and delivery. CLIL aims to improve performance in both the content subject and the foreign language. Research indicates there should be no detrimental effects for the CLIL pupils (and often progress is demonstrably better). Other advantages include: stronger links with the citizenship curriculum (particularly through the use of authentic materials, which offer an alternative perspective on a variety of issues) increased student awareness of the value of transferable skills and knowledge greater pupil confidence.What are the practical implications of introducing CLIL into the school curriculum? The content subject should always be the primary focus of any materials used in the CLIL classroom. CLIL should not be used as an opportunity to use texts as glorified vocabulary lists, or to revise concepts already studied in the mother tongue. However, it is impossible to transfer existing content subject lesson plans across without modifying these to take into account pupils' ability in the target language, and therefore the planning process is vital. It is likely that, especially to begin with, lessons will need to be challenging cognitively, with comparatively light linguistic demands. Schools need to design materials to suit the needs of their learners, and to enable them to develop until they are working at high levels of cognitive and linguistic challenge.

What is the best approach to CLIL teaching?

The diversity of CLIL activity in UK schools is striking. It is not possible to generalise to any extent about the subjects chosen, the type of school pioneering such approaches, nor the ability of the learners chosen to participate. The predominant language of the projects is French, although a number of projects are operating in German or Spanish. It appears, then, that no approach to CLIL can be set in stone. One of the purposes of the Content and Language Integration Project is to compare the outcomes of different approaches in a variety of different schools.

What about staffing?

Although availability of CLIL-trained teachers is limited, preliminary research carried out by CILT indicates that schools have adopted a wide variety of different approaches to staffing, from non-native speaker linguists with no specialist content subject knowledge, to native speaker subject content specialists, and every possible permutation in between. CILT's evidence suggests that CLIL teaching is frequently delivered through a combination of solo and team-teaching, often supplemented by collaboration between departments in non-contact time.

How do schools tackle timetabling issues?

CILT research revealed a range of different approaches to timetabling CLIL, from isolated lessons over the school year and 'bilingual days', to modules and even occasionally a whole year's commitment. Many schools are starting to combine such work with class visits and/or partnerships with link schools abroad. Some schools choose to launch fast-track GCSE foreign language courses in Years 8, 9 and 10, after an initial diagnostic period. These run alongside lessons where the foreign language learning is integrated with another curriculum subject. See also organisational issues.

What about national accreditation for courses and modules taught in this way?There is currently no formal accreditation for bilingual work in the UK. This in part explains the preponderance of KS3 initiatives in the case studies that CILT is monitoring.

Where can I learn more?

CLIL compendium

Developed with funding from the European Union, this site offers a comprehensive guide to different CLIL methodologies, and links to a number of European sites.

Euroclic

This network aims to actively promote exchanges of information, experience and materials between the different categories of players in the field of content and language integrated teaching as well as promoting their interests at a national and European level.

CLIL Axis

This project presents best practice examples of Team Teaching as a CLIL method in the world of professional education and work. The target groups are vocational educators who teach content through a foreign language, language teachers, and working life representatives who co-operate in the planning and implementation of educational programmes.

CLIL Quality Matrix

A web-based CLIL quality matrix, which shows core quality factors required for successful implementation of teaching and learning through a foreign language.

Sources of authentic materials

French

Cyber-Profs

A teacher's compilation of sites of materials created for Geography, History and Education Civique in French.

German

LeMO (Lebendiges virtuelles Museum Online)

Resources for various periods of German history, including summaries of issues and periods, and audio and video streaming.

Lehrer-online

A German site with extensive links to materials in German across the curriculum, together with a section on materials and advice for bilingual teaching.

Bilinguales Lernen Online

Another German site devoted to bilingual teaching; although biased towards CLIL in English, many of the links are to materials of use in the German CLIL classroom.

Example of teaching CLIL

Teaching CALL

Computer-assisted language learning (CALL)

Computer-assisted language learning (CALL)is succinctly defined in a seminal work by Levy (1997: p. 1) as "the search for and study of applications of the computer in language teaching and learning".[1] CALL embraces a wide range of ICT applications and approaches to teaching and learning foreign languages, from the "traditional" drill-and-practice programs that characterised CALL in the 1960s and 1970s to more recent manifestations of CALL, e.g. as used in a virtual learning environment and Web-based distance learning. It also extends to the use of corpora and concordancers, interactive whiteboards,[2] Computer-mediated communication (CMC),[3] language learning in virtual worlds, and Mobile-assisted language learning (MALL).[4]

The term CALI (Computer-assisted language instruction) was in use before CALL, reflecting its origins as a subset of the general term CAI (Computer-assisted instruction). CALI fell out of favour among language teachers, however, as it appeared to imply a teacher-centred approach (instructional), whereas language teachers are more inclined to prefer a student-centred approach, focusing on learning rather than instruction. CALL began to replace CALI in the early 1980s (Davies & Higgins 1982: p. 3)[5] and it is now incorporated into the names of the growing number of professional associations worldwide.

An alternative term, Technology-enhanced language learning (TELL),[6] also emerged around the early 1990s: e.g. the TELL Consortium project, University of Hull.

The current philosophy of CALL puts a strong emphasis on student-centred materials that allow learners to work on their own. Such materials may be structured or unstructured, but they normally embody two important features: interactive learning and individualised learning. CALL is essentially a tool that helps teachers to facilitate the language learning process. It can be used to reinforce what has been already been learned in the classroom or as a remedial tool to help learners who require additional support.

The design of CALL materials generally takes into consideration principles of language pedagogy and methodology, which may be derived from different learning theories (e.g. behaviourist, cognitive, constructivist) and second language learning theories such as Stephen Krashen's monitor hypothesis.

Example of teaching CALL

 CALL: 

       Unit : Science and Technology  topic: Invention M.5
       Teaching CALLdownload

Teaching Listening Skill

Teaching Listenning

Listening is the language modality that is used most frequently. It has been estimated that adults spend almost half their communication time listening, and students may receive as much as 90% of their in-school information through listening to instructors and to one another. Often, however, language learners do not recognize the level of effort that goes into developing listening ability.

Far from passively receiving and recording aural input, listeners actively involve themselves in the interpretation of what they hear, bringing their own background knowledge and linguistic knowledge to bear on the information contained in the aural text. Not all listening is the same; casual greetings, for example, require a different sort of listening capability than do academic lectures. Language learning requires intentional listening that employs strategies for identifying sounds and making meaning from them.

Listening involves a sender (a person, radio, television), a message, and a receiver (the listener). Listeners often must process messages as they come, even if they are still processing what they have just heard, without backtracking or looking ahead. In addition, listeners must cope with the sender's choice of vocabulary, structure, and rate of delivery. The complexity of the listening process is magnified in second language contexts, where the receiver also has incomplete control of the language.

Given the importance of listening in language learning and teaching, it is essential for language teachers to help their students become effective listeners. In the communicative approach to language teaching, this means modeling listening strategies and providing listening practice in authentic situations: those that learners are likely to encounter when they use the language outside the classroom.

The Challenge of Teaching Listening Skills

Teaching listening skills is one of the most difficult tasks for any ESL teacher. This is because successful listening skills are acquired over time and with lots of practice. It's frustrating for students because there are no rules as in grammar teaching. Speaking and writing also have very specific exercises that can lead to improved skills. This is not to say that there are not ways of improving listening skills, however they are difficult to quantify.

One of the largest inhibitors for students is often mental block. While listening, a student suddenly decides that he or she doesn't understand what is being said. At this point, many students just tune out or get caught up in an internal dialogue trying translate a specific word. Some students convince themselves that they are not able to understand spoken English well and create problems for themselves.

They key to helping students improve their listening skills is to convince them that not understanding is OK. This is more of an attitude adjustment than anything else, and it is easier for some students to accept than others. Another important point that I try to teach my students (with differing amounts of success) is that they need to listen to English as often as possible, but for short periods of time.

I like to use this analogy: Imagine you want to get in shape. You decide to begin jogging. The very first day you go out and jog seven miles. If you are lucky, you might even be able to jog the seven miles. However, chances are good that you will not soon go out jogging again. Fitness trainers have taught us that we must begin with little steps. Begin jogging short distances and walk some as well, over time you can build up the distance. Using this approach, you'll be much more likely to continue jogging and get fit.

Students need to apply the same approach to listening skills. Encourage them to get a film, or listen to an English radio station, but not to watch an entire film or listen for two hours. Students should often listen, but they should listen for short periods - five to ten minutes. This should happen four or five times a week. Even if they don't understand anything, five to ten minutes is a minor investment. However, for this strategy to work, students must not expect improved understanding too quickly. The brain is capable of amazing things if given time, students must have the patience to wait for results. If a student continues this exercise over two to three months their listening comprehension skills will greatly improve.

Example of teaching Listening

Listening Plan 

 Unit : Myself Topic : Family 

Sub-topic : Member & Detail M.4 Listening download

Teaching CBI model

CBI lesson plan

CBI - Content Based Instruction Model

CBI is fundamentally a curricular approach or framework, not a method. The focus of most foreign language curricula is on learning about language rather than learning to use language for meaningful communication about relevant content. CBI, in contrast, is an approach to curriculum design that seeks to reach a balance between language and content instruction with an emphasis “on using the language rather than on talking about it” (Lightbown & Spada, 1999, p. 92). This is not to say that there is never an emphasis on the language itself in CBI; on the contrary, CBI at its best integrates a focus on language in the context of content instruction. It has a “dual commitment to language- and content-learning objectives” (Stoller, 2004, p. 261).

The Theory Behind Content-Based Instruction

by Thomas G. Sticht

In adult basic education, including the learning of English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), content-based instruction is instruction that focuses upon the substance or meaning of the content that is being taught. This is in contrast to "general literacy" or "general language" instruction, which use topics or subject matter simply as a vehicle for teaching reading and writing, or the grammar or other "mechanics" of English language, as general processes (Brinton, Snow, & Wesche, 1989). Various "general literacy" programs may also emphasize the learning of general processes such as "learning to learn," "critical thinking," or "problem solving" skills. In such instruction, the emphasis is upon developing the general processes, and the content that is used is generally treated as of only incidental interest.

In this paper, I will first provide a perspective from cognitive science that emphasizes the importance of both content and processes in human cognitive activity, including literacy. Then I will discuss a program of research on content-based instruction which has been considered influential for workplace, health, and family literacy programs that integrate content with basic skills instruction (Shanahan & Neuman, 1997). This research was the first to apply concepts from both behavioral and cognitive science to the development and evaluation of an entire, operational adult literacy program.

The new content-based program was demonstrated to be more effective in achieving both content-related and general literacy outcomes than the general literacy education programs that professional adult literacy providers had already put into operation. Its effectiveness was replicated when it repeatedly replaced existing general literacy programs at sites in six different states from the west to the east coasts. No other research has been found in the field of adult basic education that provides this type of evidence for a content-based program's effectiveness. To be sure, many projects demonstrate that basic skills instruction can be integrated with theme- or content-based instruction in numerous job-related, "life skills," and other "functional" basic skills programs (see, for example, Gedal, 1989, for an example of a job-related adult literacy program; Sissel, 1996, for health-related and other types of content-based adult literacy programs). But to my knowledge, except for the research reviewed, no research compares content-based programs to process-oriented programs that are already in place. For this reason the present paper cannot provide an extensive review of research on the effectiveness of content-based instruction.

I am also unaware of any research in adult literacy education in which the researchers were able to take an existing program and replace it with one that reflected their theoretical positions and consistently produce better outcomes than the one replaced, and that this could be replicated by various teachers and administrators among different adult literacy student populations from across the nation. These are tough criteria for evaluating research-based programs, but they are the criteria that we need to apply when evaluating the claims of advocates of different approaches to adult literacy education.

Content and Process in Cognition

One of the achievements of cognitive science is the confirmation of the dual nature of cognition given in the dictionary definition: all human intellectual activities, such as thinking, communicating, problem solving, and learning, require both processes and content (knowledge). This implies that attempting to raise people's cognitive abilities to high levels simply by improving processes such as "reading," "writing," "critical thinking" is nearly futile. To perform these processes well requires high levels of content knowledge on which the processes can operate.

Cognitive psychologists have studied information processing in reading. They have found that what people know about what they are reading greatly influences their ability to comprehend and learn from texts. In one study, young adults in a remedial reading program required 11th grade "general reading" ability to comprehend with 70% accuracy if they lacked much knowledge relevant to what they were reading. On the other hand, those with high amounts of knowledge about what they were reading were able to comprehend with 70% accuracy with only sixth grade "general reading" ability (Sticht, et al., 1986).

The "Architecture" of Cognition

The influence of computer scientists who strive to develop artificial intelligence has focused more attention on the role of knowledge in human cognition (Sticht & McDonald, 1989). It has also lead to the concept of a human cognitive system that is based on the metaphor of the mind as a computer. In this approach, the mind is considered to have a long term memory that stores knowledge. This long term memory is essentially infinite in capacity.

In addition, the human cognitive system contains a working - or short term - memory that contains our thoughts of the moment. The working memory calls on knowledge in our long term memory, or what is sometimes called our knowledge or data base. It uses that information in the comprehending, learning, communicating, and reasoning that it is involved in at the moment. But, unlike the long term memory, the capacity of the working memory is severely limited. We cannot keep too many things in mind at one time because of the limited capacity of our working memories.

Among the important findings from studies of the limited capacity of working memory is that the capacity can be expanded if some of the mental processes involved are automated. For instance, in reading, it has been found that students who must occupy their limited working memory in decoding print to speech, as in phonics, cannot comprehend well what they are reading. Comprehension requires additional processing "space" in working memory, particularly in regard to addressing knowledge in long term memory and merging it with the new information gleaned from the book (see Sticht, Beck, Hauke, Kleiman, & James, 1974, for an early discussion of the concept of automaticity and its role in decoding and comprehension during reading; Adams, 1996, brings the discussion up to date).

To efficiently read and comprehend, the decoding aspect of reading must become automatic, that is, performed without conscious attention. This can only be accomplished by hours and hours of practice in reading. This is one of the reasons why adults who leave literacy programs having completed just 50 to 100 or so hours of instruction do not make much improvement in general reading comprehension: they have not automated the decoding process. A second reason is that, to markedly improve reading comprehension, one must develop a large body of knowledge in long term memory relevant to what is being read. Like skills, the development of large bodies of knowledge takes a long time.The 1940's

In World War II, the military services conducted extensive programs aimed at providing new recruits with reading skills of a functional nature. Soldiers and sailors learned to read so they could comprehend material about military life. Because the time for teaching literacy was very limited, usually less than three months, the reading instructional materials had the complexity of materials typically encountered by the end of the fourth grade of public education, but they did not cover the breadth of content that a typical fourth grader would have encountered. Rather, they taught reading by emphasizing a relatively narrow body of content knowledge about the military. Further, the readers were designed to build on the new recruit's experiences and prior knowledge about the world acquired before entering service. For instance, the Private Pete series starts with Pete at home on the farm. Then he goes to a recruiter and signs up to join the Army, rides a train to camp and is assigned to a barracks, and so forth. Because that is the procedure the vast majority of new recruits in literacy programs followed in joining the Army in the 1940's, this was content - prior knowledge - that they could talk about and comprehend, but they could not necessarily read words like "farm," "recruiter," "train," or "barracks."

Given the need to train soldiers quickly, the military programs were designed so that the recruits would only have to learn what they did not know. If a soldier had some basic decoding skills and could already recognize some words in print, emphasis was on providing practice in reading to develop word recognition skills to levels of automaticity, to reduce the processing load in working memory (cognitive process), and to develop new vocabulary and concepts about military life (cognitive content). Evaluation studies showed that literacy program graduates achieved job effectiveness ratings that were 95% as good as those of average ability, non-literacy student personnel (Sticht, Armstrong, Hickey, & Caylor, 1987).

The War on Poverty Era

During the 1960's, the military services recruited personnel with better literacy skills, but they also required higher skill levels due to the increased technological complexity of the military environment (Sticht, Armstrong, Hickey, & Caylor, 1987). During this time, I directed research teams that developed content-based literacy programs that continued the practice of focusing on a relatively narrow body of functional content. This time the literacy programs used materials not about general military life, but about specific job content. In this case, personnel who were going to be trained as cooks -- both native and limited English speakers-- learned word recognition and comprehension skills by reading from cooks materials. Those who were going to be automobile mechanics read mechanics' materials, those becoming medics read medics- materials.

Because most of the new recruits in the military's literacy programs of the late 1960's and the 1970's were not at the very beginning levels of reading -- most had skills at the fourth to sixth grade levels -- emphasis was on reading for comprehension and thinking. For instance, in one curriculum, concepts from the behavioral sciences were used to create a competency-based, individualized, self-paced series of modules on the use of tables of content, indexes, the body of manuals, procedural directions, and filling out forms. This strand emphasized the performance of "reading-to-do" tasks. In these, information was found in job materials, held in working memory until applied, and could then be deleted from working memory without storage in long term memory.

A second strand of activities focused on "reading-to-learn" tasks. In these, new knowledge in long term memory was constructed from information brought into working memory and integrated into old knowledge already in long term memory. This strand of activities drew on cognitive science research on the importance of multiple modes of representing knowledge. Personnel, working alone or in teams, read passages about first aid procedures and were taught to draw pictures about what they read to bring their prior knowledge to bear on providing a context for the first aid knowledge. They also learned to draw flow charts of the first aid procedures to develop analytical, procedural, thinking skills and to acquire the new content at a "deeper" level. By learning to make classification tables from passages of connected prose, they could better compare and contrast various types of materials, equipment, or methods, such as different communications techniques, for example, hand and arm signals, messengers, telephones, radios. General literacy programs geared toward improving the ability of personnel to read their job materials were already in place. The new job content-based programs were compared to these. The studies showed that general literacy programs made only small improvements in participants' abilities to read and comprehend job-related materials in the six weeks of full-time study permitted for literacy training. But in the same amount of time, the job-content literacy programs made about as much improvement in general literacy as the general literacy programs made, but three to five times the amount of improvement in job-related reading that the general literacy programs made (see Figure 1). Sticht et. al. (1987) provide detailed sources for statistical analyses for the more than 12,000 adult students in the general and job-related literacy programs of Figure 1 (see below), along with other studies and data related to content-based literacy instruction in job contexts.

Applications

The job-content-based approach to literacy development has been applied to content-based adult literacy instruction in civilian contexts, particularly in workplace literacy programs. Adults generally want literacy improvements to pursue some other goals, such as getting their citizenship, improving their parenting abilities, getting into post-secondary education, or getting into a job or into job training. The latter is certainly true for the millions of adults who wish to get off of welfare and into a good, well-paying job.

Many research and demonstration projects show that reading can be taught using the content of job training - or other contents, such as parenting, religious study, health, - right from the beginning levels of learning to read. Adults who want job training and are at the beginning levels of reading can learn and practice decoding skills during a part of the study period; during the rest of the period they can learn job vocabulary and concepts by listening to audio tapes, by "hands-on" experiences with job tools, demonstrations, conversations, and illustrated books. If the adults have difficulty learning decoding by phonics, they may need training in phonemic awareness, so they can hear the different sounds in the oral language, before they proceed with learning phonics knowledge. Those with fairly well-developed decoding skills can engage in practice reading in job-related materials to develop word recognition and comprehension skills. They can learn analytical thinking skills that involve the use of graphics technologies such as lists, matrices, flow charts, and illustrations.

By embedding literacy learning within the content of job training, adults can more rapidly progress from literacy education to job training to work. But to become broadly literate, adults must engage in wide-ranging reading for some years. Research indicates that it may take typical children six to eight years to become as competent in reading and comprehending the written language as they are at understanding oral language (Sticht & James, 1984). It takes the typical reader with high school skills 12 years of reading broadly across a number of content areas - science, literature, history, to become a 12th grade level reader. So becoming highly and broadly literate when starting from a low baseline of both knowledge - vocabulary, concepts - and automaticity of word recognition takes a long time.

Adults, however, typically do not have a long time to learn literacy. For this reason, the content-based approach combines decoding and comprehension education with relevant content learning. This offers the fastest way to get adults from basic literacy to entry level competence in reading in some desired domain. Then, by following a program of lifelong learning, including continuous, well-rounded reading, a person can become literate enough to qualify for higher education or advanced job training to move into better paying careers or to simply enjoy the many personal, social, and cultural benefits of higher knowledge and disciplined thinking skills.

Example of teaching CBI 

CBI Plan......
   Unit :Travel Topic: Attractive Places M.4  CBI download
   Unit: Culture Topic: Local story 
         Sub-Topic: Local history P.1 CBI download
   Unit: Health Topic: How to keep fit M.4 CBI download