Learning English to communicate with foreigners is important to search and process a lot of information. Communicative language teaching (CLT) highlighted authenticity, real-world situation, meaningful tasks, and students’ own experiences. They are ...
Learning English to communicate with foreigners is important to search and process a lot of information. Communicative language teaching (CLT) highlighted authenticity, real-world situation, meaningful tasks, and students’ own experiences. They are emphasized in the 2009 revised National English Curriculum.
Theme-based instruction is a kind of content-based instruction(CBI), which is a language-driven model to provide the content from other subjects and promote learners’language acquisition. In this model, it is possible for students to have multiple opportunities to use the words and expressions related to the contents that they have learned in content courses before. According to Brown(2007), the primary aim of the theme-based instruction is to acquire language. Attention to meaningful and relevant themes is a point of departure for instruction in language.
The purpose of the study to explore the effects of theme-based instruction on the middle school students’ English reading performance and students’ affective attitude towards learning English, reading English, and the theme-based instruction.
The researcher integrated English class with Korean history class to study both language and the subject matter simultaneously. The history teacher provides learners with knowledge on the characteristics of the culture of Joseon dynasty in Korean history class. In English class, this background knowledge helps students to comprehend the text better and have interests on the theme of the text. In co-teaching class, the history teacher explains the contents related to the English text to students in Korean and the English teacher focuses on teaching language.
For 4 weeks, 66 students 2nd year of the middle school participated in the experiment. They are divided into three groups: control group, theme-based instruction group, and co-teaching theme-based instruction group. Two experimental groups are given background knowledge in history class before reading the English text about ‘paintings in late Joseon dynasty,’ and do a project, ‘introducing traditional Korean paintings to foreigners.’
Results show that there are difference between each group’s scores on formative assessment and summative assessment. The control group’s score is lower than other experimental groups. And theme-based instruction is more effective on reading comprehension of low-level students than high-level students. Also, the experimental group students’interest on learning English and attitude towards reading English are improved after 4 weeks. They think that theme-based instruction is effective on English reading class.
Providing and activating students’ background knowledge can be necessary in English reading c
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