Both the TESOL and the ACTFL standards recommend that teachers contextualize language instruction.  This is because contextualizing language instruction has certain advantages for the learner.  The first of these would be that the context makes the imbedded target language forms more meaningful and comprehensible.  In other words, form is more memorable to learners when presented in context because it is more interesting, and the context helps the learner understand how the form is used in communication.  Besides that, learners must eventually be able to use the target language in various contexts, and there is no better way of preparing learners to use language in specific contexts than by actually having them do so.  It is for these reasons that, as recommended by the TESOL standards, ESOL instruction in the United States often integrates ESOL with content area instruction or uses academic content as a context for English language learning.  Like most ESOL teachers in U.S. public schools, I integrate ESOL with academic content, but I have found that effectively doing so requires that my lessons accommodate students with various language and content proficiencies.

The most extreme examples of how academic content gets integrated into our language classes can be seen in the blurry areas in between known as sheltered content instruction.  With my cooperating teacher, I have been teaching a sheltered world history class to our ESOL students and a few World English speakers who, for various reasons, have chosen to take our class instead of the mainstream history classes.  Because this class is technically foremost a sheltered content class and not a language class per se, we focus primarily on the content and not the language.  Lesson plans and unit plans begin with content objectives; likewise, assessment after instruction intends to assess content objectives.  In last Thursdays lesson for example, the objectives were as follows:

By the end of the lesson, students will be able to describe how the U.S became a world power in the 19^th century:

name crucial events for the U.S. expanding and becoming more powerful

sequence those crucial events

site three causes of the Spanish-American war

explain how the U.S. won the war so easily

Of course, these objectives are not completely accomplished in one lesson.  Much of this is done by having students apply knowledge they have gained from other lessons about topics such as the Industrial Revolution, the Louisiana Purchase, and the War with Mexico. 

Of great significance however is the fact that in order to perform these objectives the students must be able to perform certain communicative functions even though the objectives are not described in terms of language objectives.  For example, describing how the U.S. became a great power involves the student describing a process or giving a narrative of sorts.  This involves the use of past tense verb forms, time signals for chronological order, time clauses, and time phrases – not to mention subordination for expressing causal relationships such as “since”, “because”, or “so.”  In other words, sheltered content courses can never truly separate language from content.  Students who are unable to perform the language functions will be unable to meet the content objectives.  So, it is the sheltered content teacher’s responsibility to teach the students how to perform the objectives and comprehend the content texts.  Just making the content input comprehensible is not enough.

This interconnectivity of content and language is illustrated by the problems of students who cannot follow the content because of their language proficiency.  Even newly arrived students whose first language is a version of English (e.g. Jamaicans) often cannot follow the explanations given by the teachers in the mainstream classes.  This is largely due to the fact that the mainstream teachers speak very quickly, have local accents, and use colloquial forms.  Sometimes these newcomers from English speaking countries not only have difficulty understanding mainstream teachers, but also have difficulty using standard academic English so they can be understood by their teachers.  And, to further complicate these problems, many have literacy problems.  They are often still learning how to read and write in English.  For these and many other reasons, these speakers of World Englishes choose to take sheltered history classes instead of mainstream ones.  For similar reasons, the high proficiency ESOL students also prefer to take sheltered courses. 

For all students whose English educational background has not prepared them for mainstream courses, the sheltered content courses are a good place to learn the language needed for survival in mainstream classes.  In the sheltered courses they are provided with more comprehensible texts and they can get help in reading them.  In sheltered courses we read in class, discussing the meaning of words, sentences, and extended passages, as well as discussing strategies for reading to get information.  Besides that, in sheltered classes, students are given time for the explanation of vocabulary and even provided subsequent reinforcement activities.  In sheltered classes, even students’ notetaking is often scaffolded by outlines and cloze activities.  In order to be successful, sheltered classes do more than just accommodate students with lower proficiency or nonstandard English – they help students make up the difference and prepare for mainstreaming.

In last Thursday’s World History lesson for example, there were many opportunities for students to build proficiency and literacy instead of just content subject matter knowledge. 

For example, although the drill that begins the lesson only seems to require of them the seemingly simple task of naming three events that led to the U.S. becoming a great power, completing the drill stage of the lesson involves more English proficiency than it seems.  Some students, including World English speakers, wrote words such as “people”, “money”, and “land.”  This showed me that they didn’t really understand the concept of “events” even though it had been used frequently in texts and classroom interactions.  This became a teachable moment as I used the different answers students gave to illustrate the concept more clearly.  To follow through with that, I also had the opportunity to ask students to verbalize their explanations of their choices.  Fortunately, the students had learned some of this content in previous lessons and had supposedly read the chapter entitled “The U.S. Becomes a World Power” in which each section heading is one such event and each section an explanation of that event.  The only student who was willing to try to explain his choices was a Jamaican.  Consequently, because he is a native speaker and is very bright, he was able to explain his choices.  After hearing his answer, I grabbed another teachable moment by using his production as a model for other students of lower proficiency.  They had to try to repeat his explanation and then adapt it to their own answers.  In this manner, even the introduction to the lesson became a gold mine for proficiency building opportunities. 

After that, we did a sequencing activity, which likewise, also involved many opportunities for language learning.  In this activity, I had the students cooperate together to sequence about 20 events that I gave them, each written on a separate piece of paper.  I gave each student one event card and explained that they had to line up against the back wall to put their events in the right order.  The first proficiency building opportunity came when I asked them to repeat my instructions to prove they understood.  The students I called on could not do it partially because of a lack of production proficiency and partially because they had not clearly understood.  Eventually, I was able to find a student who could repeat the instructions with some assistance.  After that, I went back to the others and let then have another try, which they completed more successfully.  Later proficiency building opportunities came once the students got out of their seats and started trying to complete the task I had given them.  Many students just stood in one place completely inactive because they were poor problem solvers.  When faced with a problem they often just stare into space with no idea how to begin.  As the facilitator, I had to pull them along, asking them what year their event occurred, hearing them say “I don’t know.” and then dragging them back to their book to use scanning to find the date.  From this, I hope they learned problem solving (even if only by my model) and scanning for details in a textbook.  More active students, on the other hand, were able to solve the problem of getting the dates on their own, but then had to negotiate with others to find their place in the whole sequence and help others find theirs.  This involved forming and comprehending expressions such as “This one comes before that one.”, “The War with Mexico came before the Civil War.”, “The War Between the States is the same as the Civil War.”, or “I think you need to stand over here.”  As evident from this activity, an activity that seems like it will be very short and simple can often become long and complex for ESOL students as they wrestle with content and language at the same time.

In sheltered content courses, we not only have to accommodate students with different proficiency levels, but we also have to accommodate students with different content levels.  In the ESOL World History class, for example, we have students with very different levels of content subject matter knowledge, very different educational backgrounds, and very different learning abilities.  Some come to us having already studied the content in their homeland. 

One such student came from Argentina and had already studied World History and done quite well.  He knew an amazing amount of World History content but lacked the English proficiency to express it.  So, for him, the class was not about acquiring more content knowledge but about learning to express the content knowledge he already had. 

In the case of another student from Jamaica, she spoke standard English quite beautifully and had great academic skills but moved to sheltered ESOL because she was having difficulty.  The most interesting thing about this student is the way she answers our questions.  When I ask a question, she answers in perfectly comprehensible English, but I cannot make sense of her answer.  For example, when asked how the U.S. was able to defeat the Spanish so easily, she said it was because the U.S. “had more people.”  When I asked her to explain, she said that the U.S. had more people because “it had more colonies.”  I had to explain that Spain had more colonies but that the people of those colonies were fighting with the U.S. against Spain.  She seemed a little angry and frustrated at my dismissal of her answer.  In retrospect, I suspect that she was taught a different view of history in Jamaica and that some of it conflicts.  I also suspect that her notion of the word “colonies” is different. 

Besides students with previously learned content subject matter knowledge, we also get some students with little or no knowledge of related content.  They sometimes lack prerequisite knowledge about geography, dating systems, eras, and nations.  They cannot tell you the history of their own homeland and whether or not it was a colony and who it was a colony of; they do not know what a democracy is and do not know what their rights are here in the U.S.; they cannot find their homeland on a map; and, they cannot tell you what natural resources were important in 1900 or even what natural resources their homeland offers today.

For these students, we must accommodate by providing ample opportunities to review and elaborate even the simplest content subject matter.  This can be seen in my World History class on Thursday, by the way we spent a great deal of time reviewing, chunking, and contextualizing.  First, students listed important events and put them in order with an emphasis on the dates.  I asked, “How long ago was that?”  I show pictures and ask “Did they have planes then?” or “What items did the grocery stores sell back then?”  Then, students reviewed by telling their classmates what the industrial revolution was or naming some advantages of having steamships, all the while viewing illustrative pictures I draw on the whiteboard, looking at pictures in the text, or pointing to locations on maps.  Instead of assuming that they knew which nations were Spanish colonies when talking about the Spanish-American War, I had them name them out loud for the benefit of all.  Instead of assuming that they have successfully learned the reasons why the citizens of the Spanish colonies revolted against the Spanish, I review the last unit by having them name some of the reasons so those who don’t know can hear it again.  In this way, students who know what they should have learned already, share their knowledge with the class, and by doing so, help support those who are lacking this prerequisite knowledge.

In conclusion, I have found that it is much harder to teach a supposedly “simple” history class for ESOL students than to teach a supposedly “more complex” class for native speakers with the necessary background knowledge and academic skills.  This is because, when teaching sheltered content courses we are faced with the challenge of teaching language skills, learning skills, and background knowledge on top of the usual content.  In order to help the students reach the content objectives we must also teach the skills they need to learn the content and demonstrate knowledge of what they have learned.  They are all inseparable.  This means that we have to slow down, devoting about 25% to each instead of 100% to just content.