Chapter I Introduction
1.1 Research background
Content-based Instruction (CBI) is the teaching of content or information in languagebeing learned with little or no direct or explicit effort to teach the language itself separatelyfrom the content being taught (Krahnker, 1987). It emphasizes the content and informationrather than the form. So the learners should acquire the information as possible as he/ she can.As we known that one of most important goals for learning English is communication.Listening is the main route of acquiring language information and reception, as well as on theimportant way to improve writing and speaking. Doff (1988) points out that listening is animportant way to grasp the language learning of structure and vocabulary. Krashen (1985)once said no matter whether children or adults, listening comprehension is of paramountimportance in language acquisition. At the same time American foreign language teachingmethod professors Firth and River & Temperley (1978) point out that in the humancommunicative activities, listening takes up about 45%, speaking accounts for 30%, readingoccupies 16% and writing takes up 9%. In view of this, listening plays an important role incultivate students in communication with English. And the author tries to combine the CBIwith the English listening teaching, and focuses on the message rather than on form (Richards,2005).
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1.2 Research purpose and significance
The characteristics of vocational college determine the aims of students cultivating. Theymust use the learned skill at work after graduation. The students learn English not only for thelinguistic purpose but also for the professional skill. CBI seems an appropriate approach forEnglish learning. It integrates the content and language, which combines the professionalknowledge and language skill. The present study is an experimental study, which targets atresearching the influence of Content-Based Instruction (CBI) upon listening teaching. Theauthor wants to prove whether CBI is effective in English listening teaching, whether it canmotivate students and meet their needs, and at the same time help them efficiently andeffectively catch the idea of the listening material and improve their integrated listening skills.As we known that the CET has enlarged the proportion of listening which takes up 35%.Listening teaching has been attached great importance by the ministry of education test center.Listening is one of the most important language skills. How to teach it well or could it betaught? This is a headache for every English teacher. Rubin, Joan (1994) points out listening''it plays in language learning and communication, they recognize more and more theimportance of teaching ... This recognition has resulted in an increase in the number oflistening activities" listening is a complex process of decoding and receiving information, sothe learners had better keep the information in their memory and have a comparison with theprior knowledge. Listening process is more complicated than reading and writing.
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Chapter II Literature Review
2.1 Basic definition of CBI
CBI is the integration of content learning with language teaching aims and related withthe immersion education in Canada in 1965. Now it is hardly a new phenomenon. It usuallypertains to academic or occupational instruction over an extended period of time atintermediate- to-advanced proficiency levels.Although lots of scholars put forward the definitions of CBI which are not completely thesame, it emphasizes the combination of language and content. Brown gives his understandingof CBI, he believes that such an approach contrast sharply with many practices in whichlanguage skills are taught virtually in isolation from substantive content. When languagebecomes the medium to convey informational content of interest and relevance to the learner,then learners are pointed toward matter of intrinsic concern. (Brown, 2001)Brinton (2006) offers the definition of CBI: in a curriculum of "content driven", CBI isdistinguished of a specific content and associated language use skills with the concurrentlearning. i.e., the content determines the sequence and selection of language elements.Crandall and Tucker define CBI as an approach to integrate the language instruction and tasksor the topics from subject matter classes in teaching a second or foreign language. (Crandall& Tucker, 1990) CBI is "simply teaching language through teaching a subject matter, likepsychology, history or music, with the focus on subject not on the language"( Murphey, T.1997)
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2.2.1 Theme-Based Model
"The foreign language curriculum is organized either around a series of selected themes,drawn from across the curriculum, and related oral and written texts; or a major theme with subtopics in Theme-Based Model courses." (Crandall 1999) The teaching purpose and focusof the Theme-Based Model aims at a particular topic or the particular theme which are relatedwith the Language teaching. Its purpose is to find effective way to motivate students activelyto participate in various theme activities. During the process, learners could use the languageto achieve the goal of language teaching. The language skills of reading, listening, writing,and speaking can be practiced in the integrated theme activities. The acquisition of languageis different from the traditional grammar structured teaching, either different from the specialarrangement of non-fixed theme language training. In Theme-Based Model, the choice oftopic should accord with the needs of students, which can be a professional knowledge, orcommon sense of life. Teaching materials are native language, which is wrote or edited bynative speaker. The purpose is to provide students with authentic English pronunciation, thestructure of language and culture background. Theme-Based Mode is appropriate for subjectof professional English course which organizes activities of various forms For instance:"Tourism English" focused more on the communicative function, for example the scenesimulation form is more acceptable.
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Chapter III Research Design .... 18
3.1 Restatement of research questions ........ 18
3.2 Subjects and instructors..... 18
3.3 Research instruments.... 19
3.4 Classroom experiment design ..... 22
3.5 A sample lesson plan.... 26
3.6 Data collection and analysis ...... 28
Chapter IV Results and Discussion ....... 29
4.1 The influence of CBI on listening achievements ...... 29
4.2 The influence of CBI on the proficiency of English for E-commerce .... 32
4.2.1 Pre-test of the proficiency of English for E-commerce........ 32
4.2.2 Post-test of the proficiency of English for E-commerce ...... 33
4.2.3 Analysis of the influence of CBI on the proficiency of English forE-commerce .... 34
4.3 The influence of CBI on the listening anxiety ..... 35
Chapter V Conclusion ....... 40
5.1 Major findings ....... 40
5.2 Implications ...... 42
5.3 Ressearch limitation ........ 43
5.4 Suggestions for further researches ...... 43
Chapter IV Results and Discussion
In Chapter four the quantitative study and qualitative study will be used to present the dataanalysis. The author will use independent samples t-test for the pre-test and the post-test for thelistening proficiency and at the same time use the paired-sample t-test to summarize theanalysis of the learners’ questionnaires, combined with the interview. As presented in secondchapter, CBI is an integration of language and content. Its aim is to improve the ability ofacquiring knowledge as well as language skill. This research’s purpose is to check theeffectiveness of CBI on influencing E-commerce major students’ English listening level andlistening anxiety and the influence on the proficiency of English for C-commerce. Therefore,in this chapter, the participants’ marks as well as the answers to the questionnaire and thedemographic information are the basis for the data analyses.
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Conclusion
The author has had an analysis about the listening English teaching under the direction ofCBI. The last two chapters have analyzed the methodology and data processing based on theCBI instruction. The author will summarize the major findings, research implication and theresearch limitation, at the same time suggestions for further researcher will be discussed inthis chapter. Since English listening teaching plays an important role in the process of Englishteaching, how to improve the listening proficiency has become a big challenge for everyteacher. As we known, listening is a key part to acquire the information, to accomplish theinput process.In this thesis, under the instruction of CBI, the author carries out the experiment.Theme-based CBI and Adjunct instruction are adopted in the experimental class to verify ifthe CBI teaching approach is efficient in improving the students’ listening marks and students’proficiency of English for E-commerce. The results are positive. As for the third question,considering lots of factors, such as the gender, the hometown, and the study habits of thestudents, though the results is not obvious, through the reviewing the author still could get theconclusion: the CBI teaching method is effective to relieve the anxiety in some degree, so allthe hypotheses in this research have got proved at last.
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