Content-Based and Sheltered Instruction

After reading both chapters on content-based and sheltered instruction I could not help but thinking of the work I did in the Colombian Ministry of Education and the National Bilingual Program (NBP). In short, the National Bilingual Program is an initiative by the Colombian government to improve the quality of English Language Teaching in public schools around the country. This initiative has brought about a significant growth on the interest of all stakeholders in the field of English teaching. One of the unexpected consequences of the NBP is an the spread of what I think are unnecessary initiatives in an EFL context such as the Colombian one.

This is not the place to comment about the NBP, but one thing that caught my attention was to see the difference between implementing a content-based approach in ESL and EFL settings. In countries like the US, it is very clear that a Content-Based approach can be very helpful if implemented mindfully. Young learners at schools do students do have an immediate and mediate need to become proficient in the use of academic English: they need to be able to cope with the demands of content areas in the short term, and of course they need to learn English for the needs imposed by the English-speaking environment around them. However, in places like Colombia, where there are no immediate needs for students to become proficient in the foreign language, I consider that there is no reason to implement such an approach. Unfortunately, some schools are starting to implement bilingual programs in the initial grades of primary school. That is, core classes such science, social science and math are being taught mainly in English. I’m very dubious that the positive effects of such an endeavor outweigh the negative ones.  

It is very clear that the intention of these schools is to provide English teaching that is taught around concepts that have a trajectory beyond the language classroom. I understand the rationale of this. However, in order to successfully implement content-based teaching, one needs to have a strong teaching team that is skilled in the foreign language as well as in the content areas. This is very hard to find in the US, not to mention in Colombia.I believe that such schools, which still face enormous challenges in terms of providing quality education in the native language and in these core classes,  should concentrate its efforts in: a)improving the quality of these core classes in the native language, b) try to improve the quality of language teaching through other means (e.g. providing professional development opportunities to EFL teachers).