The Impact of Content-Based Instructional PROGRAMS on the Academic Progress of ESL Students Loretta Frances Kasper

Primary focus “Content-based ESL courses present students with discipline-based material in a meaningful, contextualized form in which the primary focus is on the acquisition of information” (L.F. Kasper, 1997)

To provide quantitative evidence of the benefits of content-based intruction in the subsequent academic performance of ESL students (up until their. The Study (I) Goal

152 ESL students at Kingsborough Community College KCC in New York. 73 students were enrolled in content- based courses during a four-semester period (experimental group) and 79 students were enrolled in non-content based courses (control group). The Study (II) Participants

The experimental group enrolled in a multiple-content course (ESL 09), where five different academic fields were studied: language acquisition, computer science, anthropology, biology and psychology. The control group took the same ESL 09 course but classes “were not grounded in any specific academic disciplines, but rather covered a wide range of topics”. The Study (II) Participants

The same four-stage process for both content-based and non-content based courses: –1. Establishing background information. –2. Reading the actual readings. –3.Discussion & Analysis. –4. Topical videos. Class dynamics

At the end of each semester, students sat an examination which assessed proficiency in English language reading and writing skills. “In all four semesters, students in the experimental group obtained significantly higher scores on the final examination than did students in the control group”. (L.F. Kasper, 1997) The Study (III) Method & Results

The Study (IV) Subsequent Performance What happened next? Did students who were in the content-based courses continue outperforming those who were not in subsequent perfomance?

After the ESL 09 course, all students at KCC must take the ESL 91 course Developing Fluency in Reading and Writing. At this stage, students were not divided into experimental and control groups, and teachers in the ESL 91 used their own materials, content-based or not. The Study (IV) Subsequent Performance

After four more semesters, all students in ESL 91 took both a reading and a writing assessment examination: –Students in the original experimental group “obtained significantly higher grades than did students in the control group (…) [which proved] the experimental group students were able to maintain their linguistic advantage whether or not they continued to be exposed to content-based instruction”. (L.F. Kasper, 1997) The Study (IV) Subsequent Performance

As for the reading test… –Average scores of 75% for the experimental group and 67% for the control group. As for the writing test (CUNY WAT)… –“Experimental group students accounted for 60% of the total number passing the CUNY, while control group students accounted for only 40%”. (L.F. Kasper, 1997) The Study (IV) Subsequent Performance

A total of 88 students from the overall subject sample of 152 progressed to the mainstream English composition course English 22, –49 of which came from the experimental group (of the original 73 students). –39 of which came from the control group (of the original 79 students). The Study (IV) Subsequent Performance

“Students from content-based not only did better at the time of instruction, but continued to do better throughout the semesters following such instruction”. (L.F. Kasper, 1997) The Study (V)Summary

It seems reasonable to assume then that content-based instruction is efficient for a number of reasons: –It “presents students with intensive study of and practice with linguistic and rhetorical structures within a meaningful context”. –It provides students with the necessary knowledge on the discipline of interest. –It forces them to use “more advanced levels of language processing”. The Study (VI) Discussion