Theory and Practice of Developing Undergraduates’ Critical Thinking Through Sustained-Content Language Teaching Beijing 2007.5.16

Part I Introduction What’s needed? What’s taught? What’s happened? How?

What’s needed? To be functionally literate To be academically literate To be able to use English to gather, synthesize, and evaluate information of content areas

What’s taught? To improve students’ general English proficiency To be able to interact efficiently in social situations

What’s happened? Generally, students’ proficiency in general English does not correlate with their proficiency in academic English.

Most students thought they knew English, but were unable to understand the lectures and the readings in their bilingual classes. Bilingual teachers could not follow their students’ essays written in English. After several paragraphs, they were quite unsure as to what the essays were about.

Specifically, most students did not lack the ways to make their ideas, but the way argumentation is made in English. To sum up, a gap exists between what’s needed and what’s taught.

How to bridge the gap? To define sustained-content language teaching approach (SCLT) To elaborate on why SCLT is recommended To describe the one-year teaching experiment to prove the applicability of SCLT to Chinese EFL instruction To provide the students’ feedback from the experiment to support the practical efficacy of SCLT

Part II Theoretical Foundations The two major components SCLT consists of (Murphy & Stoller 2001): A focus on the exploration of a content area, or carrier topic; and A complementary focus on L2 learning and teaching

The four primary advantages SCLT has (Pally 2000): Psychologically, it enables students who are interested in what they study recall more information, synthesize it, and elaborate on it better than non-motivated learners; Linguistically, it recycles words and forms, easing memory and acquisition; calls on students’ prior knowledge and schema; and builds schema through progressive units of content study.

Pedagogically, it lends itself to “scaffolding” (where a student works with the teacher or a more advanced student to grasp a challenging concept or skill) and “private speech” (which helps students understand an idea or rehearse a presentation), both of which facilitate learning in that scaffolding occurs whenever students help one another and private speech occurs when students face challenges they must work through; and

Collegially, it enhances relations between language teaching staff and content-area instructors, where the former are usually separated from the rest of the campus because of their status of ESL/EFL instruction.

The two natures SCLT possesses to develop critical thinking skills: Content …in order to grasp and manipulate content, students must learn critical thinking skills, but in order to learn these skills, students must study content that is complex enough and enduring enough that argumentation and rhetorical conventions can be identified, practiced, and questioned (Pally 2000).

Sustained Students can develop their critical thinking skills as well as vocabulary rhetorical devices only through continual practice and reflection on their work. However, our current language classes generally cover readings on various topics and change topics often. As a result, students have no opportunity to stick with one subject and, therefore, have little to synthesize, question, and evaluate.

To sum up, the four reasons why SCLT is recommended to bridge the gap: It helps students accumulate information, with which they are able to gather, synthesize, and evaluate what they read; It helps students become familiar with the rhetorical conventions, which makes their ideas more appreciated academically;

It helps students practice in language class the critical thinking skills, which they will need for and can transfer to future subjects, thereby helping them grapple with future academic/professional demands; and It helps students practice their linguistic skills, thus improving their language proficiency.

Part III Pedagogical Application Subjects 180 freshmen from the School of Finance at Shandong Economic University

Materials Experimental Class: Textbook: Business English Integrated Course Extensive readings: Readings on each subtopic selected by the teacher to replace the ones concerning general English in each unit Control Class Textbook: 21st Century College English, including both intensive and extensive readings

The profile of the teacher A young female lecturer, with a Master’s degree and an experience of about 5 years in college English teaching

Class activities Step 1 Pre-reading activity Step 2 Studying the text Step 3 Enhancing knowledge through exercises Step 4 Furthering knowledge through additional readings Step 5 Synthesizing concepts through writing Another activity Discipline-focused writing

Results

Reading Comprehension (20%) Table 1 Comparison of CEFE Means of EC and CC (Fall 2005) (n=180) Items of CEFE Means SD t-value Sig. (2-tailed) EC CC Listening Comprehension (35%) 20.99 20.41 4.294 4.942 .426 -.801 Vocabulary & Structure (15%) 10.93 11.23 1.740 1.755 -1.183 .240 Reading Comprehension (20%) 17.79 14.09 2.251 2.128 6.438 .000 Cloze (20%) 13.03 13.27 2.528 2.672 -.635 .527 C-E Translation (10%) 9.39 9.29 1.545 1.424 .449 .655 Total Scores (100%) 72.13 68.29 4.290 4.790 .453 .674 Speaking (15) 11.27 11.08 1.293 1.376 1.076 .285 P≤.05

Reading Comprehension (20%) Table 2 Comparison of CEFE Means of EC and CC (Spring 2006) (n=180) Items of CEFE Means SD t-value Sig. (2-tailed) EC CC Listening Comprehension (30%) 21.23 21.16 2.903 3.174 .337 -.966 Vocabulary & Structure (15%) 11.55 11.79 0.970 0.900 1.169 0.246 Reading Comprehension (20%) 15.42 12.87 2.583 2.732 6.314 .000 Cloze (10%) 7.11 7.04 1.283 1.005 .183 .856 E-C Translation (10%) 8.06 7.94 1.248 1.173 1.153 .252 Writing (15%) 12.05 10.02 1.230 1.438 9.974 Total Scores (100%) 75.42 70.82 5.187 5.121 1.557 .180 Speaking (15) 11.06 10.83 P≤.05

Table 3 BEFE Means of EC (Fall 2005 & Spring 2006) (n=90) Items of Exams Means Fall 2005 Spring 2006 Listening Comprehension (20%) 14.08 13.8 Reading Comprehension (50%) 39.25 39.19 E-C Translation (10%) 8.63 8.3 Writing (20%) 15.26 15.12 Total Scores (100%) 77.22 76.41

SCLT improved significantly the students’ critical thinking skills. SCLT enriched to some degree the students’ knowledge of content areas. SCLT did not impair the students’ performances in general English learning.

Part IV Students Feedback Examples of the questions Do you think using the readings on business as the content of College English Reading course a good idea? Do you think this course will help you to work on your bilingual course in your junior academic year? Would you like to go on with this course in the following semester? Please give your comments on the pedagogy of SCLT (advantages and disadvantages). Please give your suggestions on it.

Students’ responses 96% students answered “Yes” to the first and third questions, and 84% to the second question. They thought the thinking style they developed in the course would most help them to work on their bilingual course. Their improved language proficiency would also help them to understand the probably more complex subject content-area But they did not think that the content they learned would be much helpful if it was unrelated to the future content-area.

96% students offered favorable comments on SCLT. Most of them reported that the central benefit was the accumulation of the information, which made them more able to develop their ideas, provide more chances to become familiar with rhetorical conventions, and increase their confidence in their grasp of both, as well as language skills. Another benefit of the pedagogy students reported was motivation.

Part V Implications for Ongoing Work At the present stage of our knowledge of L2 learning, connecting theory with language teaching practice is a risky business. Although we are quite confident that the pedagogy of SCLT rests on theoretical foundations of several fields, its real research substantiation in Chinese college English teaching has yet to begin.

Some challenges SCLT presents us: Positive administrative support Financial and physical resources A faculty passionately dedicated to SCLT and professionally skilled in its philosophy and strategies Curriculum planning and development The decision of a certain content-area and appropriate levels of discipline-specific vocabulary and conventions A system to assess and monitor program outcomes Students who are linguistically and affectively prepared for SCLT

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