Transcript Document 7420672

Theory and Practice
of Developing Undergraduates’ Critical Thinking
Through Sustained-Content Language Teaching
Beijing
2007.5.16
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Part I Introduction
What’s needed?
What’s taught?
What’s happened?
How?
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What’s needed?
 To be functionally literate
 To be academically literate
 To be able to use English to gather,
synthesize, and evaluate information of
content areas
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What’s taught?
 To improve students’ general English proficiency
 To be able to interact efficiently in social
situations
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What’s happened?
 Generally, students’ proficiency in general
English does not correlate with their proficiency
in academic English.
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 Most students thought they knew English, but were
unable to understand the lectures and the readings in
their bilingual classes.
 Bilingual teachers could not follow their students’
essays written in English. After several paragraphs,
they were quite unsure as to what the essays were
about.
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 Specifically, most students did not lack the ways
to make their ideas, but the way argumentation is
made in English.
 To sum up, a gap exists between what’s needed
and what’s taught.
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How to bridge the gap?
 To define sustained-content language teaching
approach (SCLT)
 To elaborate on why SCLT is recommended
 To describe the one-year teaching experiment
to prove the applicability of SCLT to Chinese
EFL instruction
 To provide the students’ feedback from the
experiment to support the practical efficacy of
SCLT
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Part II Theoretical Foundations
 The two major components SCLT consists of
(Murphy & Stoller 2001):
 A focus on the exploration of a content area, or
carrier topic; and
 A complementary focus on L2 learning and teaching
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 The four primary advantages SCLT has (Pally
2000):
 Psychologically, it enables students who are interested
in what they study recall more information, synthesize
it, and elaborate on it better than non-motivated
learners;
 Linguistically, it recycles words and forms, easing
memory and acquisition; calls on students’ prior
knowledge and schema; and builds schema through
progressive units of content study.
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 Pedagogically, it lends itself to “scaffolding” (where a
student works with the teacher or a more advanced
student to grasp a challenging concept or skill) and
“private speech” (which helps students understand an
idea or rehearse a presentation), both of which
facilitate learning in that scaffolding occurs whenever
students help one another and private speech occurs
when students face challenges they must work
through; and
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 Collegially, it enhances relations between language
teaching staff and content-area instructors, where the
former are usually separated from the rest of the
campus because of their status of ESL/EFL instruction.
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The two natures SCLT possesses to
develop critical thinking skills:
 Content
…in order to grasp and manipulate content, students
must learn critical thinking skills, but in order to learn
these skills, students must study content that is
complex enough and enduring enough that
argumentation and rhetorical conventions can be
identified, practiced, and questioned (Pally 2000).
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
Sustained
Students can develop their critical thinking skills as
well as vocabulary rhetorical devices only through
continual practice and reflection on their work. However,
our current language classes generally cover readings
on various topics and change topics often. As a result,
students have no opportunity to stick with one subject
and, therefore, have little to synthesize, question, and
evaluate.
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 To sum up, the four reasons why SCLT is
recommended to bridge the gap:
 It helps students accumulate information, with which they
are able to gather, synthesize, and evaluate what they
read;
 It helps students become familiar with the rhetorical
conventions, which makes their ideas more appreciated
academically;
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 It helps students practice in language class the
critical thinking skills, which they will need for and can
transfer to future subjects, thereby helping them
grapple with future academic/professional demands;
and
 It helps students practice their linguistic skills, thus
improving their language proficiency.
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Part III Pedagogical Application
 Subjects
180 freshmen from the School of Finance at Shandong
Economic University
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 Materials
 Experimental Class:
 Textbook: Business English Integrated Course
 Extensive readings: Readings on each subtopic
selected by the teacher to replace the ones
concerning general English in each unit
 Control Class
 Textbook: 21st Century College English, including
both intensive and extensive readings
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 The profile of the teacher
A young female lecturer, with a Master’s degree and an
experience of about 5 years in college English teaching
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 Class activities
 Step 1 Pre-reading activity
 Step 2 Studying the text
 Step 3 Enhancing knowledge through exercises
 Step 4 Furthering knowledge through additional
readings
 Step 5 Synthesizing concepts through writing
 Another activity Discipline-focused writing
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 Results
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Table 1 Comparison of CEFE Means of EC and CC (Fall 2005)
(n=180)
Means
SD
t-value
Sig.
(2-tailed)
Items of CEFE
EC
CC
EC
CC
Listening Comprehension (35%)
20.99
20.41
4.294
4.942
.426
-.801
Vocabulary & Structure (15%)
10.93
11.23
1.740
1.755
-1.183
.240
Reading Comprehension (20%)
17.79
14.09
2.251
2.128
6.438
.000
Cloze (20%)
13.03
13.27
2.528
2.672
-.635
.527
C-E Translation (10%)
9.39
9.29
1.545
1.424
.449
.655
Total Scores (100%)
72.13
68.29
4.290
4.790
.453
.674
Speaking (15)
11.27
11.08
1.293
1.376
1.076
.285
P≤.05
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Table 2 Comparison of CEFE Means of EC and CC (Spring 2006)
(n=180)
Means
SD
t-value
Sig.
(2-tailed)
Items of CEFE
EC
CC
EC
CC
Listening Comprehension (30%)
21.23
21.16
2.903
3.174
.337
-.966
Vocabulary & Structure (15%)
11.55
11.79
0.970
0.900
1.169
0.246
Reading Comprehension (20%)
15.42
12.87
2.583
2.732
6.314
.000
Cloze (10%)
7.11
7.04
1.283
1.005
.183
.856
E-C Translation (10%)
8.06
7.94
1.248
1.173
1.153
.252
Writing (15%)
12.05
10.02
1.230
1.438
9.974
.000
Total Scores (100%)
75.42
70.82
5.187
5.121
1.557
.180
Speaking (15)
11.06
10.83
1.248
1.173
1.153
.252
P≤.05
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Table 3 BEFE Means of EC (Fall 2005 & Spring 2006)
(n=90)
Means
Items of Exams
Fall 2005
Spring 2006
Listening Comprehension (20%)
14.08
13.8
Reading Comprehension (50%)
39.25
39.19
E-C Translation (10%)
8.63
8.3
Writing (20%)
15.26
15.12
Total Scores (100%)
77.22
76.41
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 SCLT improved significantly the students’ critical
thinking skills.
 SCLT enriched to some degree the students’
knowledge of content areas.
 SCLT did not impair the students’ performances in
general English learning.
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Part IV Students Feedback
 Examples of the questions
 Do you think using the readings on business as the content of
College English Reading course a good idea?
 Do you think this course will help you to work on your bilingual
course in your junior academic year?
 Would you like to go on with this course in the following
semester?
 Please give your comments on the pedagogy of SCLT
(advantages and disadvantages).
 Please give your suggestions on it.
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 Students’ responses
 96% students answered “Yes” to the first and third
questions, and 84% to the second question.
 They thought the thinking style they developed in the
course would most help them to work on their bilingual
course.
 Their improved language proficiency would also help them
to understand the probably more complex subject contentarea
 But they did not think that the content they learned would
be much helpful if it was unrelated to the future contentarea.
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 96% students offered favorable comments on SCLT.
 Most of them reported that the central benefit was the
accumulation of the information, which made them more
able to develop their ideas, provide more chances to
become familiar with rhetorical conventions, and increase
their confidence in their grasp of both, as well as
language skills.
 Another benefit of the pedagogy students reported was
motivation.
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Part V Implications for Ongoing Work
At the present stage of our knowledge of L2
learning, connecting theory with language
teaching practice is a risky business. Although
we are quite confident that the pedagogy of
SCLT rests on theoretical foundations of several
fields, its real research substantiation in Chinese
college English teaching has yet to begin.
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 Some challenges SCLT presents us:
 Positive administrative support
 Financial and physical resources
 A faculty passionately dedicated to SCLT and professionally
skilled in its philosophy and strategies
 Curriculum planning and development
 The decision of a certain content-area and appropriate levels of
discipline-specific vocabulary and conventions
 A system to assess and monitor program outcomes
 Students who are linguistically and affectively prepared for SCLT
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Questions are welcome.
Email: [email protected]
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