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.
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
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น