What is a cross-curricular lesson?<\/h1>\n
One solution to our language education crisis is cross-curricular lessons, or lessons that use language as a medium for teaching other subjects.<\/p>\n
As eSchool News notes<\/a>, \u201cbeyond giving educators the chance to teach more than one discipline during a lesson, cross-curricular lessons also help students recognize the real-world application of their learned skills.\u201d Rather than a French lesson focusing on the subjunctive, a cross-curricular lesson might require that learners discuss a current event or an ecological discovery in French, giving context to the language as a communicative tool.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t an imagined concept\u2014K-12 schools and universities around the U.S. are already doing it.<\/p>\n In small-town Maryland, Anne Arundel County Public Schools have\u00a0married languages and STEM subjects<\/a>, instructing their K-5 STEM classes in Chinese, Arabic, and Spanish. Parents were hesitant at first, but young students have embraced the opportunity: \u201cEven a non-Mandarin speaker can see that children are learning at a high level in Mandy Tang\u2019s first-grade class at West Side. After a lesson in subtraction, the children write and illustrate their own mathematics word problems, many choosing to do so in Chinese.\u201d<\/p>\n The Trout Gallery at Dickinson College is tying language together with the arts, an effort that earned them the 2018 James W. Dodge Foreign Language Advocate Award<\/a>. The award recognizes the gallery\u2019s \u201cinnovative approach to language learning through a program that makes art the basis for conversation in students\u2019 target languages.\u201d According to the gallery director, classes use objects on display as the basis for a discussion in the target language. He applauded the program, suggesting \u201cvisual art is an effective way of developing skills for language learners.\u201d<\/p>\n In the STEM world, the University of Rhode Island\u2019s engineering department offers a 5-year\u00a0dual degree in engineering and a foreign language<\/a>, which includes a compulsory year of studying and interning abroad. For students enrolled in the rigorous five-year dual degree in International Engineering and International Business, a term abroad at the Universit\u00e9 de Technologie de Compi\u00e8gne in France offers the opportunity to \u201cexplore the culture and technology environment, and communicate with their budding language skills.\u201d<\/p>\n U.S. Customs and Border Protection has long trained agents in Spanish, but the course was typically grammar-based. In 2006, CBP did away with its traditional Spanish course and replaced it with \u201cTask Based Language Teaching\u201d (TBLT)\u2014a curriculum focused on mastering specific, job-related tasks in Spanish.<\/p>\n The results<\/a>\u00a0were impressive: \u201cStudents in the task-based\u00a0course were able to out-perform students in the previous grammar-based course in terms of oral accuracy, fluency, and complexity, while performing at an equivalent\u00a0level in grammatical accuracy\u201d. The agents-in-training also agreed that the course was \u201cuseful and relevant to their on-the-job Spanish needs\u201d.<\/p>\n At Transparent Language, our language training programs are designed to help professionals for whom language success is not optional.<\/p>\n Our team of\u00a0cohort coaches<\/a>, for example,\u00a0has been tasked with helping U.S. Government linguists, and translators sustain their language skills between periods of formal training.\u00a0Using the\u00a0CL-150<\/a>, these coaches develop and distribute weekly lessons designed to push the students to their proficiency threshold.<\/p>\n As world events dictate, coaches create and assign what we call a \u201cMINE\u201d lesson, or a language lesson focusing on a Major International News Event, as reported on by local news outlets. These events\u2014economic, environmental, political, scientific, or beyond\u2014can relate to the target culture or to a major multicultural event.\u00a0For example, within 24 hours of Donald Trump winning the U.S. presidential election, for example, MINE lessons were created and assigned to learners of 6 different languages. Using authentic, current materials gives learners the chance to experience \u201creal\u201d language use, while also educating them about the political or cultural climate of the region in which they operate.<\/p>\n Cross-curricular teaching would mark a revolutionary shift in education, so it\u2019s natural to expect some resistance. It would require significant collaboration between subject experts and language teachers, as well as sufficient teacher training. But most things worth doing are hard, right?<\/p>\n There is one myth about cross-curricular language lessons that needs to be debunked, though. Educators, companies, or parents may fear that since students are learning in a non-native language, they may not fully understand the subject material. Can you actually learn math in Chinese if you\u2019re still learning Chinese?<\/p>\n Yes, you can! According to research<\/a> from the University of Vienna, learners \u201cpossess the same amount of content knowledge as their peers who were taught in the [native language].\u201d In fact, some researchers argue that \u201clinguistic problems, rather than leading to task abandonment, often prompt intensified mental construction activity [\u2026] and better understanding of curricular concepts can occur.\u201d In other words, learners are rising to the challenge.<\/p>\n Simply put, contextual, communicative learning yields better results.<\/p>\n The same research<\/a> by the University of Vienna compiled numerous studies showing positive results of what they call \u201cContent and Language Integrated Learning\u201d (CLIL): \u201cIt is often observed that by way of CLIL students can reach significantly higher levels of [target language] than by conventional foreign language classes (Wesche 2002) and that positive effects on communicative competence are visible (e.g. Wode 1994, Klieme 2006)\u201d.<\/p>\n Once again, Forbes<\/a> hits the nail on the head: \u201cBy de-emphasizing the focus on language itself, we may actually improve our acquisition of it, because when we stop trying to teach people about what they are saying and just start expecting them to say it, we will see far better results.\u201d<\/p>\nK-12 and higher ed institutions are already using cross-curricular language lessons.<\/h1>\n
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<\/p>\nBusinesses and organizations also use cross-curricular, task-based language lessons for relevant job training.<\/h1>\n
We integrate cross-curricular language lessons in our corporate training programs as well.<\/h1>\n
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<\/p>\nLearning in a foreign language does not handicap comprehension.<\/h1>\n
Why does contextual, communicative language learning matter?<\/h1>\n
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