Posted on the CoBaLTT website with permission.

Original citation: Met, M. “Teaching Content Through a Seond Language.” (1994) In Genesee, F. (ed.) Educating Second
Language Children: The Whole Child, the Whole Curriculum, the Whole Community. Cambridge University Press,
New York., pp. 159-182.

7 Teaching content through a second language

‘Mimi Met’

The public media and educational literature have been replete recently with discussions of
educational reforms, educational restructuring, and educational goals for the year 2000, goals that
are the same for all our nation’s schoolchildren. Yet for a substantial and growing segment of the
school population, achieving the goals of schooling has an added challenge: How can they be
attained when students have limited proficiency in English?

Many approaches to educating minority language students seem to be based on the assumption
that proficiency in English is a prerequisite for academic learning, even though research seems to
indicate that it may take as long as seven years for students to acquire a level of academic English
proficiency comparable to native English-speaking peers (Collier, 1989; Cummins, 1981).
Clearly, if minority language students are to achieve the goals of education, academic learning
cannot be put on hold until students have acquired proficiency in English.

The results of foreign language immersion have shown that students can develop content
knowledge at the same time as they develop language skills. In immersion, majority language
students are educated in a new language. In total immersion programs, school activities—from
mundane tasks such as collecting lunch money to cognitively demanding tasks such as learning
how to read—are conducted in a foreign (second) language. Numerous studies of Canadian
immersion programs have shown that English-speaking students schooled in French not only
attain higher levels of proficiency in French than in any other school-based model of second
language instruction but do so at no detriment to their native language, academic, or cognitive
development (Genesee, 1987; Lambert and Tucker, 1972; Swain and Lapkin, 1985).

In the United States, schools are challenged to provide a quality education to students who are
not yet proficient in English, and there are many teachers charged with developing these
students’ linguistic and academic proficiencies. Some teachers are English as a second language
(ESL) teachers who see the children for part of the school day. Other teachers are grade-level
teachers in whose rooms the students are “mainstreamed” for most of the day. And others are
grade-level teachers whose students have been “exited” from ESL or bilingual programs but
whose students continue to struggle with the linguistic demands of the academic curriculum. Yet
other teachers of minority language students work in two-way immersion programs (also known
as dual immersion, developmental bilingual, or two-way bilingual) or are bilingual education
teachers whose students may have limited proficiency in English, and even perhaps their native
 Teaching content through a second language 2

language. These students must be provided with content instruction. The students of these
teachers simply cannot wait to develop high levels of academic language proficiency before
tackling the demands of the curriculum. A basic premise of this chapter is that all teachers who
work with second language students—second language teachers, grade-level teachers, bilingual
education or two-way immersion teachers—must enable their students to make academic
progress while they are learning English. It is clear from the results of foreign language immersion
that achieving such a goal is possible.

Foreign language immersion teachers must also develop the linguistic and academic competence
of majority language students who are learning through a new language. Recently, increased
attention has been given to identifying what immersion teachers do (or should do) to facilitate the
codevelopment of second language proficiency and academic content learning (Lorenz & Met,
1988; Mojhanovich & Fish, 1988; Snow, 1987). This chapter will draw upon the roles and tasks
of immersion teachers and apply them to second language teachers. First, we will see how
planning for instruction is affected by consideration of students’ limited proficiency in the
language of instruction. Then, we will explore how, as in foreign language immersion, teachers
may adjust classroom activities and the delivery of instruction when the demands of the
curriculum exceed the linguistic skills of students. Third, the chapter will focus on how
assessment of student progress may be done when students are educated in a non-native
language. Finally, we will discuss the implications of redefining the roles of teachers who work
with second language students as teachers of content as well as of language, and the implications
of these roles for teachers' relationships with one another.

Planning for instruction

All good teachers must be good planners. Costa and Garmston (1985) have suggested that good
teaching rests on good planning. They indicate that the planning phase of the teaching process
requires high levels of thought and may be the most important element in successful teaching.
According to Costa and Garmston, good teachers see each lesson in terms of long-range and
short-term instructional goals. They think about the lesson from the viewpoint of the learner and
consider how individual learning styles, preferences, and abilities will interact with the lesson to
be delivered. They envision the lesson as it will unfold (almost as though viewing a video in their
head). Effective teachers plan with precision, identifying what they and their students will be
doing in each part of the lesson, anticipating areas that may cause difficulty, and ensuring that
time and materials needed for the lesson will be available.

Teachers who educate students in a non-native language need to do all of the above. But their
unique charge requires that they perform additional planning tasks as well. These include
sequencing objectives, planning for language growth, identifying instructional activities that make
content accessible, selecting instructional materials appropriate to students' needs, and planning
for assessment.
 Teaching content through a second language 3

Sequencing content objectives

Teachers responsible for developing the content skills may find it helpful to adjust the sequence
of content objectives, as do foreign language immersion teachers. Immersion teachers develop
long-range plans by considering the language demands of the academic objectives. Where the
structure of the academic objectives permits, teachers may find it helpful to reorder the sequence
of content objectives so that those requiring the most language skills are postponed until students
have had an opportunity to increase their language proficiency. Some objectives can be taught
primarily through hands-on or visual experiences. Others may be more difficult to demonstrate in
the classroom, be more abstract, or require that students have a greater repertoire of oral or
writing skills. For example, in a primary grade science unit on “Living Things Grow and Change,”
firsthand experiences allow students to develop concepts about the growth of plants, concepts
which can be developed during a four-week time frame. In contrast, learning about the growth of
people requires pictures and more discussion since students cannot experience the concepts
directly in class in a reasonable amount of time. Similarly, the effects of adequate and inadequate
nutrition on plant growth can be shown, whereas the effects on human growth must be talked
about. By dealing with plant growth first, second language teachers, like immersion teachers, can
build the language skills necessary for students to address the objectives related to human
growth.

Planning content lessons that contain language objectives

Teachers need to view every content lesson as a language lesson. It is especially important for
teachers to see every language lesson as an opportunity to enhance students’ concept attainment.
Snow, Met, and Genesee (1989) have suggested a conceptual framework for identifying language
objectives and have described how teachers in a variety of language teaching settings (ESL,
bilingual, immersion, and FLES programs) fulfill their roles within this framework. The authors
identify two kinds of language objectives: content-obligatory and content-compatible language
objectives. Content-obligatory language is language so closely associated with specific content
objectives that students cannot master the objectives without learning the language as well. For
example, students cannot explain when to add and when to subtract without knowing the terms
add and subtract and without some mechanism for expressing cause and effect relationships (e.g.,
“You add because . . “ “When you have . . . you add.”). In contrast, content-compatible language
can be easily taught through a content lesson, but the material could be taught and learned
without knowledge of this vocabulary, grammar, or language functions. For example, sixth-grade
students discussing the relative merits of different forms of government can enrich the quality of
their arguments if they have a wide range of vocabulary at their disposal (e.g., liberty, despotic,
tyrannical) but could learn the concepts of democracy, autocracy, and so on with more limited
linguistic resources (e.g., free, unfair, can't do what you want, etc.).

Content-based second language learning can play an important role in providing students with
the language of academics needed for successful content mastery. Working collaboratively with
 Teaching content through a second language 4

grade-level teachers, second language teachers can identify the content-obligatory language needed
for subject matter mastery in the mainstream classroom. This language may then become the
primary focus of second language lessons. Indeed, the teacher may teach the content lesson,
incorporating the needed language skills and using activities that make the lesson and language
comprehensible to students. Content-based classroom activities that use concrete experiences,
manipulatives, and hands-on materials can facilitate the acquisition of content-obligatory language
and may provide students with a valuable advance organizer for lessons on the same topic taught
in the mainstream classroom. In bilingual or two-way immersion settings, teachers also need to
identify content-obligatory language and plan conscientiously for the development of needed
language skills in the course of content instruction.

Content-compatible language objectives are an important factor in students’ continued language

growth. They help teachers focus on how students’ language skills can be stretched, refined, and
expanded beyond their present level of attainment. Since students will always need to improve
and refine their language skills (after all, even native speakers do), content-compatible language
objectives are an important part of lesson planning. All teachers who teach students in a
non-native language can find it helpful to build both content-obligatory and content-compatible
language objectives into the planning of every content lesson.

Content-compatible objectives are drawn from three sources: (1) a second language scope and
sequence that describes how students are expected to grow and develop in their second language
skills; (2) the teacher’s observation of student language skills and his or her analysis of their
classroom needs; and (3) the anticipated linguistic demands of the content curriculum to be taught
in future lessons. Many U.S. school districts define ESL objectives in a curriculum scope and
sequence for ESL instruction. Traditionally, these have been taught in isolation by ESL teachers.
The teachers who may have seen their role as developing survival language skills or grammatical
accuracy may find it more useful to see, themselves as teachers of language through content (i.e.,
content-based ESL) and to conscientiously plan for teaching the language of the curriculum. By
selecting content from the school’s curriculum that is compatible with ESL objectives, teachers
can use this content as a communicative and cognitively engaging means of developing language
and also help to promote their students’ mastery of content material. For example, a
content-based ESL teacher might reinforce the mathematics curriculum and simultaneously
develop the ESL curriculum objectives related to describing daily activities and routines. The
teacher might have students determine the amount of time they spend on these daily activities
and routines, convert the information into percentages (out of twenty-four hours), and display
those data in a pie graph.

Another example of planning content-compatible language objectives derives from teacher

observation of students’ demonstrated language proficiency. The ESL, bilingual, or grade-level
teacher may note that students consistently make errors of register when making requests of
adults. The teacher notes that students frequently use commands (“Give me that!”), indirect
declaratives (“I need that.” “I want that.”), or less polite forms of request (“Can I have that?”).
Because the classroom provides few natural opportunities for students to develop skill in
 Teaching content through a second language 5

adjusting their speech register to their audience, the teacher plans an assignment that addresses
both the social studies objective in Explorers of the New World, for example, and the language
needs of students—students could role-play Christopher Columbus soliciting the support of the
Spanish monarchs in order to give students opportunities to use language for making requests.

The third source of content-compatible language objectives is the teacher’s long-range plans for
content objectives and the sequence in which content objectives will be taught. For example, a
first-grade teacher (grade-level, bilingual, two-way, or foreign language immersion) plans a science
unit for December to teach the concept that some objects float and some objects sink. In theory,
the teacher can use any objects to demonstrate the concept—a bar of soap, an eraser, a brick. But
the teacher also knows that in January students will begin a social studies/science unit on Foods
That Nourish the Body, a unit for which the content-obligatory language will be vocabulary
related to fruits and vegetables. Therefore, this teacher plans to use fruits and vegetables in
December in the float/sink activities, making future content-obligatory language part of current
content-compatible objectives. In a similar way, second language teachers can help to prepare
their students for the language demands of content lessons to be taught in the mainstream
classroom, by planning lessons that incorporate the anticipated language needs of the regular
classroom.

Planning instructional activities

Once language and content objectives have been defined, teachers need to plan activities that are
experiential, hands-on, cognitively engaging, and collaborative/cooperative. Planning for such
activities is likely to be done by grade-level teachers (mainstream, bilingual, two-way, or foreign
language immersion) and by content-based second language teachers.

Instructional activities and related materials must be both context-embedded and cognitively
demanding. Cummins (1981) defines instructional tasks in terms of two intersecting continua.
Context-reduced tasks are those that rely on few external supports for meaning (e.g., pictures,
realia, manipulatives, or a meaningful context) (see also Chapter 1). In context-reduced tasks,
meaning must be accessed primarily through language. At the other end of the continuum,
context-embedded tasks use many supports for meaning to help make language, and thus the
task, understandable. Listening to a lecture on an abstract topic is a context-reduced task;
determining the weight of an object using a scale and metric weights is a context-embedded task.

Tasks may also be cognitively undemanding or demanding. Counting from one to one hundred
is undemanding for most older children; finding the number that completes a pattern (e.g., 5, 9,
17, . . .?) is cognitively demanding. The challenge for teachers is to meet the cognitive demands of
the curriculum by providing context-embedded instruction.

Students who are learning content in a new language have difficulty with cognitively demanding
tasks in context-reduced situations. To allow students to acquire abstract concepts, teachers need
 Teaching content through a second language 6

to design instructional approaches that make the abstract concrete. By enabling students to
match what they hear with what they see and experience, teachers can ensure that students have
access to meaning. Experiential, hands-on activities make input comprehensible. In fact, it is
precisely this process of matching experience with language that allows students to learn language
from content instruction. The use of concrete materials, hands-on activities, visuals, and realia
provide multiple access and a variety of multisensory approaches to learning. In sum, these
experiences can make the abstractions of content learning, in Cummins' terms, context-embedded.

Cummins argues that the challenge of teaching students in a second language is to provide
experiences that are both context-embedded and cognitively demanding. Too often, language
instruction that is context-embedded is cognitively undemanding, simply a series of activities that
are reduced, in the ultimate, to naming pictures. Content instruction by its very nature should be
much more cognitively demanding. Teachers need to design activities that are accessible to
students yet cognitively engaging. For example, rather than preteach vocabulary in isolation to
describe what different objects are made of (wood, plastic, metal, etc.), one second-grade teacher
used a lesson from a unit on Conductors of Electricity to demonstrate the meanings of these
terms. As the teacher and students tested whether objects of wood, plastic, or metal in a
battery’s closed circuit would allow a bulb to light, students acquired both the language for
describing matter and the concept that some materials do not conduct electricity.
Lastly, teachers must plan instructional experiences that provide for student-to-student
communication. Students need frequent and sustained opportunities to produce language,
opportunities best provided through collaborative group learning activities (Long and Porter,
1985; Swain, 1985). Such collaborative activities provide for critically needed practice in
verbalizing content knowledge. In addition, in mainstream and two-way immersion classrooms,
heterogeneously structured pair and group activities also provide opportunities for students to
use language for meaningful social interaction with peers.

Planning for instructional materials

One outgrowth of planning activities is the identification of materials needed for instruction.
These will include manipulatives, visuals, and print and nonprint media. Although all teachers
obviously have to think about the materials they will use during instruction, those who educate
through a second language must add special criteria for selecting materials. Although there may be
a large body of commercially produced materials available, these are rarely appropriate for
students learning content in a language new to them. Most often, commercially available materials
(developed for native speakers) demand a level of linguistic proficiency well beyond that of
students, whereas materials that are at an appropriate linguistic level will often be inappropriate
to students’ cognitive maturity. Commercially produced materials targeted at native speakers are
often culturally rich. This can be both an advantage and disadvantage. It is critically important for
language learners to understand the culture of the language they are learning, but too often
culturally rich materials provide an incomprehensible cultural context for learning (see also
Chapter 2). For example, a mathematics word problem-based on a visit to the state fair may
 Teaching content through a second language 7

confuse students who know the mathematical principles required for solving the problem but do
not understand the setting, and thus the nature, of the problem.

Teachers must decide whether to adapt existing materials or develop their own. Some teachers
are reluctant to develop their own materials, believing themselves less well-equipped to do so
than professional authors and editors. While teacher-made materials have the distinct advantage
of being designed to address the needs, abilities, and cultural background of students, they do
require a considerable investment of teacher time and energy and often lack the color and artwork
that is so appealing to younger learners. (A more detailed discussion of criteria for evaluating and
selecting instructional materials may be found in Lorenz & Met, 1988.)
Integrating culture

Those who work with second language students just like immersion teachers) will want to plan
for the integration of culture. This may mean teaching students about the culture of the speakers
of the language they are learning as well as that of the students themselves. Where possible,
culture should be infused into other areas of the curriculum. Teachers who integrate the teaching
of culture with the objectives of the school curriculum can more easily “find time” for one more
set of objectives and enrich instruction because students’ learning is integrated rather than
fragmented. A French immersion teacher working on a grade four social studies objective,
geographic features of our region, used this opportunity to compare and contrast the
topography of the local area with that of a selected region in France. Another immersion teacher
used a fifthgrade science lesson on climate as a springboard for understanding the implications of
geography on climate in contrasting Spanish-speaking cities such as San Juan, Mexico City,
Lima, and Buenos Aires.

Similarly, those who work with learners of English can and should ensure that planning for
instruction includes attention to the sociocultural needs of students, to cultural information and
attitudes that will help students function in a new culture, and reinforce positive attitudes to
students’ home culture (see Chapter 12).

Planning for assessment

Instructional planning requires teachers to think about how language and content objectives will
be assessed (see Chapter 9). Instruction and assessment go hand-in-hand, and planning for
assessment and planning for teaching should be done at the same time. When planning for
teaching and planning for assessment are done in a coordinated manner, teachers are able to
ensure that their objectives, their teaching, and assessment all fit together. If teachers know what
they want students to be able to do, and if they know how they are going to find out if students
can do it, then planning how students will be prepared to perform (that is, what teaching
activities they will use to enable students to learn) also becomes clear. Particularly when content
is taught through a language in which students have limited proficiency, decisions need to be
 Teaching content through a second language 8

made about how to assess content knowledge through language or independently of language. We
will return to assessment later in this chapter.

In the classroom: teaching students in a second language

Enabling students to develop content knowledge and concepts when they are being educated in a
language in which they have limited proficiency is not easy. Teachers must perform a variety of
tasks and roles to ensure that students acquire the skills and knowledge in the school’s
curriculum at a level commensurate with those students who are learning it in their native
language. To do this, teachers must be skilled in negotiating meaning; they must have
well-developed skills in monitoring student performance; they must be expert in instructional
decision making; they must serve as a role model for the use of language, cultural behaviors, and
learning strategies; and they need to structure the environment to facilitate language learning. Each
of these tasks is described in the following paragraphs.

Negotiation of meaning

Teachers who provide instruction in the student’s second language must be continuously engaged
in a negotiation of meaning process. In negotiating meaning, teachers and students endeavor to
make themselves understood and to understand each other. It is a collaborative process of give
and take in which each participant works to send and receive comprehensible messages (see, for
example, Hawkins, 1988; Saville-Troike, 1987; Snow, 1989). Negotiation of meaning is critical in
classrooms where students are learning content in a new language. If the meaning of what the
teacher says is unclear, it will be difficult for students to acquire the skills and knowledge of the
curriculum.

Although there are many aspects to this process, and some of these aspects often occur
simultaneously, for the purposes of discussion here the role of the teacher will be discussed from
three perspectives: (1) making language understandable to students; (2) helping students make
their messages understood; and (3) stretching, expanding, and refining students’ language
repertoire. These roles are discussed in greater detail below.

MAKING LANGUAGE AND CONTENT ACCESSIBLE

When students’ language proficiency is very limited, the teacher plays a major role in the
negotiation of meaning process by using context-embedded instructional tasks and by
interpreting students’ responses (or lack of them) as an indicator of the effectiveness of his or her
communication. Because comprehension is essential to the learning of content, the teacher must
ensure that his or her (i.e., the teacher’s) messages are being understood. In delivering content
lessons, teachers accompany talk with many contextual clues. Most characteristically, such
 Teaching content through a second language 9

lessons rely heavily on concrete materials, hands-on experiences, manipulatives, and visuals.
These help students match language with meaning.

Teachers of content (whether they be content-based second language teachers, mainstream

teachers, or teachers in bilingual and two-way or foreign language immersion classrooms) can also
help students with limited language proficiency acquire new concepts by linking new learning to
background knowledge. For example, a social studies lesson on modes of transportation in the
students’ community can begin by having them classify miniature cars, trucks, planes, and so on
according to whether they use them regularly, occasionally, or never; or students may classify
these modes of transportation by the frequency with which they are used in their native country.
A reading lesson on fables is easier for a fourth grader who is familiar with the structure of fables
(e.g., a tale with a lesson at the end) than for one who is not.

Teachers also make language comprehensible by modifying their speech. They may speak more
slowly, emphasizing key words or phrases. They may simplify their language, using more
common vocabulary or simpler, high frequency grammatical structures. Redundancy provides
additional supports for meaning. Teachers may restate, repeat, or paraphrase. Synonyms linking
new vocabulary with known words facilitate both content and language learning, as does
definition through exemplification. Similarly, antonyms provide counterexamples to meaning
(e.g., “No, it’s not cold; it’s hot.”). Body language, such as gestures and facial expressions, also
help to link language to meaning.

HELPING STUDENTS COMMUNICATE

In the early stages of second language development, students have limited means of conveying
their own messages in the new language. Teachers can play an important role in helping students
get their meaning across, particularly in settings where students are taught by teachers who do
not know the students’ language. Just as teachers rely heavily on concrete materials, visuals, and
body language, so too should students be encouraged to use these as enhancements for conveying
meaning. Thus, students should have ready access within the classroom to visual and concrete
materials. However, students should be encouraged to use both verbal and nonverbal means of
communicating, or they may become overly reliant on nonverbal supports to their messages.

Teachers enable students to communicate verbally by making a “rich interpretation” of

students’ attempts to communicate (see, for example, Wells, 1986), and by maintaining open
channels of communication. These are often accompanied by checks for understanding. When
asked how Native Americans communicated across long distances, a fourth grader replied,
“Smoke.” The teacher interpreted his answer by responding, “Do you mean the Native
Americans sent smoke signals to one another?” If there are students in the class with greater
language proficiency, the teacher may ask them to expand on the first student’s response (“Who
can tell me more about what Juan has told us?”) or ask a third student to paraphrase the response
of the second (“Lupe, can you explain what Phan just said?”). These strategies encourage
 Teaching content through a second language 10

continued communication between teacher and students, allow teachers to check their own
comprehension of students’ messages, and check students’ comprehension of content.

At this stage of linguistic development, when students are still quite limited in their abilities to
understand and speak the new language, teachers may find it worthwhile to teach explicitly skills
in conversational management. Students need to know how to say “I don't understand,” or
“Please repeat.” Later, these skills can become more refined as students learn to rephrase these
statements more politely (“Would you mind repeating that, please?”).

EXPANDING AND REFINING STUDENTS' LANGUAGE

From the time students begin to produce language and as they continue to develop proficiency,
teachers play an important third role. Gradually, as students become more skilled in their new
language, teachers must help students expand their language skills and refine their existing ones.
This is done both in the course of instruction, as teachers respond to students directly, or as they
observe student-to-student communication. This, in turn, becomes observational data to be used
in planning for students’ language growth and in identifying content-compatible language
objectives for future lessons.

Because continued growth in language proficiency depends upon extended opportunities for
linguistic interaction, teachers need to provide for frequent collaborative learning activities both in
the second language classroom among learners of English and in classrooms where students can
interact with native speakers. These activities increase the frequency of opportunities for
students to hear language used for meaningful communication and to test out their own growing
language repertoire. Continued, frequent, and sustained interactions provide for both input and
output. In mainstream and two-way immersion classrooms, communication between native and
non-native students allows learners of English to hear ever-increasing examples of the language
and how it is used. As they listen to others, students also come to recognize “That’s how you
say that!” Each time these students speak, they are testing hypotheses they have formed about
how the language works. The nature of the responses they receive from teachers or classmates
helps them ascertain the validity of their hypotheses.

While classmates thus provide an important vehicle for language practice, the teacher is equally
important in refining student language. A sixth-grade student describing religious practices in
Ancient Egypt indicated that the Egyptians would often “kill an animal for a god.” The teacher
replied, “Yes, it was a sacrifice.” Teachers thus use content lessons as a means for stretching
students’ vocabulary, increasing their exposure to more sophisticated forms of academic
discourse, and for explicitly developing language skills. These content lessons that embed
language development were discussed earlier, in the section on planning when we examined the
role of content-compatible language objectives.
 Teaching content through a second language 11

The teacher as monitor

Teaching, it has been said, is like being inside a popcorn machine, with many things going on all
at once. The teacher’s task is to implement the lesson designed during the planning phase, yet
monitor the lesson and students while teaching it. Monitoring is an integral part of the feedback
cycle needed for effective formative evaluation. As teachers continuously monitor content
mastery and language development, they observe and analyze students’ verbal and nonverbal
performance, checking for understanding of language and concepts. Often, it is difficult to
ascertain whether students have difficulty with content because of their lack of language
proficiency or despite it.

In a study of novice and veteran teachers, Berliner (cited in Brandt, 1986) found significant
differences in their skills in monitoring multiple classroom events. When confronted with a bank
of video monitors depicting several classroom settings and events, expert teachers were far more
skilled in observing and reporting on their observations. Novice teachers, by contrast, were barely
able to report accurately the events in one classroom. Teachers in mainstream, bilingual, or
two-way immersion settings, in particular, need to be proficient in monitoring multiple classroom
activities and events. These teachers have to contend with the range of ability levels characteristic
of all classrooms and also with a significantly greater range of linguistic ability in the language of
instruction. Because research supports the importance of providing students with extensive
opportunities to use their growing language skills, second language teachers and other teachers
who work with second language students need to provide for extensive pair and group work
activities, and they, in turn, require greater monitoring skills on the part of the teacher (see
Chapter 8). In addition, when learners of English are mainstreamed with native speakers of
English, the teacher has more to monitor because of the distinct needs of ESL students in the
class. Similarly, teachers in two-way programs face the greater challenges posed by the diversity
of students’ cognitive and linguistic proficiencies.

Skills in monitoring multiple classroom activities and events develop with time. A first and
simple step in developing such skills is the awareness that such monitoring is not only desirable
but an important element in managing learning in the classroom. A useful approach to monitoring
student performance is to identify in advance indicators of on-task behavior, of successful
content mastery, and of successful linguistic performance. Observations focused on such clearly
identified indicators and use of record-keeping devices, such as checklists and anecdotal records,
will promote effective monitoring of students and provide for sound instructional decision
making (see Chapter 9).

Teachers' observations during the monitoring phase are a primary basis for instructional
decisions. Teachers may use both informal and systematic observation of students. Students may
be observed in cooperative groups or teacher-centered formats. Observations enable teachers to
determine how well students are learning the curriculum objectives. A variety of information
sources—anecdotal records, checklists, and data provided by student learning logs, for
 Teaching content through a second language 12

example—may provide teachers with the information needed to monitor the effectiveness of their
instruction and make appropriate instructional decisions.

Instructional decision making

Jackson (1968) has noted that teachers may make as many as 1,300 nontrivial instructional
decisions each day. Effective instructional decision making requires a repertoire of instructional
options, and the knowledge base necessary for choosing wisely among the options.

Providing instruction in a students’ second language requires a greater repertoire than that of
teachers in monolingual settings. Teachers who lack repertoire lack the flexibility to respond to
learner’s needs. Teachers who know only one way to teach a skill or concept have no fallback
options if observations indicate that this one way is ineffective or inappropriate for a given
individual or group of students. While all effective teachers need a repertoire of instructional
approaches, teachers in second language settings need an expanded repertoire of strategies for
making abstract skills and concepts concrete. That is, not only must the teacher have alternative
approaches for teaching a given concept, the alternatives must also address the special linguistic
and cultural needs of students. And the use of multiple approaches to making concepts
understandable often means that a variety of learning preferences are addressed (i.e., the visual,
the tactile, the kinesthetic, etc.).

Good decision making requires more than repertoire, more that is, than an awareness of the
many options available. It also requires that teachers be able to select appropriately from this
range of options. The ability to choose within one’s repertoire depends on a sound understanding
of how language and concepts are learned, and of how the characteristics of learners and
instructional settings interact. Good decision making is informed decision making.

For teachers who teach content in a language new to students, informed decision making may
depend upon an even deeper understanding of students and how they learn than it does in a
monolingual setting. The teacher’s knowledge of students’ needs and abilities and of their
linguistic and cultural characteristics will help to determine which of the available options is most
appropriate at a given moment. For example, in a lesson on the natural habitats of frogs, a
minority language student states that most frogs live in trees. The teacher’s options include:

• accept the student’s response without comment

• respond with positive reinforcement
• correct the student if the response is deemed incorrect
• probe to see if the student has misunderstood the lesson
• conclude that the student said tree because that is the only word for natural habitats the
student knows, and therefore, the teacher decides to provide additional vocabulary options in
her response
 Teaching content through a second language 13

• conclude that the student has said tree because in Puerto Rico, where this student comes from,
there is a common tree frog (coqui), and therefore, for this student, the answer is correct
• decide that further instruction using pictures and visual aids is needed to ensure that students
are aware that frogs have several natural habitats and that students have the verbal skills to
discuss them

While teachers in monolingual classrooms may face similar decisions, teachers who work with
second language learners will need to have a broader understanding of students’ background and a
broader range of repertoire in order to make appropriate instructional decisions.

The teacher as model

For students who are being educated in a second language, teachers are models of linguistically
and culturally appropriate behaviors. The teacher models both the academic and social language
students will need. As we have seen earlier, content lessons serve as a vehicle for teachers to
model the language of the academic curriculum. Through these lessons students acquire both new
knowledge and the means to talk about them. In addition, teachers have opportunities throughout
the day to model social language. They greet students, discuss students’ activities outside the
school setting, describe their own activities, and conduct administrative routines that provide
many opportunities for non-instructional interaction. Culturally appropriate behaviors (both
linguistic and nonlinguistic) are also modeled through instructional and non-instructional
interactions. Students may observe differences between the way teachers speak to one another,
the principal, parents, and other adults in the school and the ways in which they speak with
children. Students may also observe nonlinguistic features such as proximity, gestures, and other
body language appropriate to their new language. These learnings, in the long run, contribute to
the growing effectiveness of students’ communication.

Like teachers of native speakers, second language teachers can also model learning. Such
techniques as reciprocal questioning and think aloud protocols (Bereiter & Bird, 1985) modeled
by teachers (and later used by students) have a dual function when students are learning content
through a new language. In the first language classroom, these techniques help students to acquire
useful strategies to improve and monitor their own learning. Teachers who model these
techniques to students who are learning content in a new language are additionally providing
these students with the language they need in order to be clear in thinking and talking about their
content learning. Further, such strategies promote higher order cognitive processes. This is
particularly important in second language classrooms where too often instruction can easily slip
into mere rote recitation of facts, labelling, or naming activities.

Whether a second language, grade-level, bilingual, two-way immersion, or foreign language

immersion teacher, it is helpful for teachers to be aware of and exploit opportunities to serve as
models of language, learning, and culture.
 Teaching content through a second language 14

Structuring the environment

Grade-level teachers can help students acquire content in a language new to them through a
carefully structured environment. A daily schedule that follows predictable patterns can facilitate
language comprehension in the early stages of language development. Students can surmise that
the teacher is directing them to prepare for lunch if lunch predictably follows the end of the
mathematics lesson each day. Similarly, other classroom routines (attendance, collection of lunch
money, distribution of materials) can help students match language to experience. Environmental
print can help students begin to recognize the relationship between the oral classroom vocabulary
they know and associated print labels. Bulletin boards filled with an abundance of visual
materials can support content objectives; print labels and text accompanying the visuals can also
provide for increased content and language learning. Most importantly, learning centers filled
with hands-on experiences and listening tasks can contribute to content learning and language
growth

A supportive, accepting learning environment benefits all students—regardless of their home

language or culture. For students who may be anxious about trying to learn demanding content in
a new language, a supportive environment is even more critical. Activities that are structured for
success are likely to build the self-esteem needed for academic achievement. Frequent positive
reinforcement helps uncertain learners know they are on the right track and encourage them to
persevere. Wait time, which has been shown to increase the quality and quantity of student
responses in native language classes (Rowe, 1978), is even more necessary in second language
content classes. This is because limited-proficiency students must not only think about the right
answer from the content perspective, but they also need time to formulate how they will
communicate their response.

Assessing student progress

All teachers use assessment to measure how much students have learned; they use the results of
assessment to evaluate the degree to which student learning meets their stated objective(s). When
assessing students, teachers should be most concerned with finding out what students have
learned, and they should allow students to demonstrate what they have learned. The emphasis
should be on what students do know and can do, not on what they do not know and cannot do.

Assessment takes place both continuously and at the end of a unit of study. Teachers are
continuously monitoring student performance informally during instruction. As was discussed
earlier, such informal assessment provides important information for instructional decision-
making, enabling teachers to informally monitor the effectiveness of instruction in addressing the
learning needs of students (see Chapter 9). Information about student achievement collected in
such an informal manner is based on students’ verbal and nonverbal feedback during the course of
lessons. This kind of assessment information is extremely useful for modifying ongoing
instruction to ensure that what is taught and how it is taught is effective in helping students learn
 Teaching content through a second language 15

concepts and language. More formal methods of assessment (such as tests) tell teachers how well
individual students are progressing, whether they have attained unit objectives, and whether the
teacher should advance to the next unit. Most commonly used forms of assessment are for these
purposes.

Assessing concept mastery

Educating students in a second language presents unique problems in assessment. Teachers may
have difficulty determining whether students fail to perform as expected because they have not
mastered the concepts or because they simply lack the linguistic resources to demonstrate what
they have learned. When students are extremely limited in their linguistic repertoire, it may be
best to separate assessment of content mastery from language. What strategies can teachers of
content use to ensure that students can demonstrate content mastery even when they are as yet
unable to verbalize their knowledge and understanding?

Students may be asked to act out their knowledge. For example, students may take on the roles
of the sun, moon, and earth and move in relation to one another to demonstrate their
understanding of the concepts of revolution and rotation. Students may be given physical objects
with which to demonstrate their understanding, as when students categorize plastic foods into
the four basic food groups. Pictures can be part of paper/pencil tests, with students crossing out
pictures that do not belong in a given group (e.g., Which of the following does not conduct
electricity—a metal pin, a plastic ball, a piece of paper, or aluminum foil?). Or students may
draw a picture to show what they know (e.g., foods the settlers of New England introduced to
the Native Americans; foods the Native Americans introduced to the settlers).

Performance assessment is a way of measuring student achievement “by means of observation

and professional judgment” (Stiggins, 1987, p. 33). It is “the process of gathering data by
systematic observation for making decisions about an individual.” (Berk, 1986, p. ix). Classroom-
based performance assessment uses a variety of procedures and approaches for gathering
information about student performance. Portfolios of student work (such as audiotapes and
videotapes, writing samples, projects, posters, dioramas, and models), systematic observation of
classroom performance, and conferences with individual students about their assignments and
projects, are also effective ways to find out about student progress in relation to the objectives
set for them. Because they are based on student performance, and not on some idealized,
nonexistent average student or native speaker, they show what students actually know and can
do. They can also be used to compare each student to his or her last performance and thereby
give an indication of how individual students are progressing. Lastly, they are an appropriate
way of ensuring that the delivery of content instruction is commensurate with the linguistic
proficiency of the student at that point in time and in that content domain.

As students’ language proficiency grows, and in particular their ability to read and write their
new language, paper/pencil tests may be used for limited responses. For example, true/false
 Teaching content through a second language 16

items, multiple choice tests, fill-in-the-blank items (particularly when a word bank is provided)
can provide opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning despite their limited
expressive capabilities. These tasks may lead the way to even more linguistically demanding
assessment tasks such as rewriting false statements as true ones or responding with simple
sentences and short paragraphs.

Although decisions about appropriate content instruction for students with limited language
proficiency should not be based primarily on language-based assessments, it is important that
students eventually be able to demonstrate their knowledge both verbally and nonverbally
because “language proficiency is important to nearly everything that takes place in education”
(Oller, 1991). The more effectively one can express one’s thoughts through language, the more
clear and precise thinking becomes. Research on the process of writing, for example, has shown
that the processes required to produce a good piece of writing require and produce higher levels
of cognition (Olson, 1985; Tierney, Soter, O'Flahavan, & McGinley, 1989). Therefore, as
students become increasingly proficient at expressing themselves (whether orally or in writing), it
becomes increasingly appropriate for teachers to encourage students to demonstrate content
learning through oral and written communication.

Assessing language proficiency

Perhaps the most neglected aspect of assessment is classroom-based assessment of students’

language skills. While many teachers conscientiously assess how much content students have
learned, assessment of language frequently is done only through standardized tests of English
language proficiency for determining eligibility for special services.

However, second language teachers, along with grade-level, bilingual, and two-way immersion
teachers, are both content and language teachers. They need to plan as conscientiously for
language growth as they do for content and vice versa. To assiduously plan for language growth,
ongoing assessment of students’ proficiency is a must. Planning for language growth means the
teacher must be continuously assessing where students are in relation to where they ought to be
and using assessment data to identify areas where further development of language growth is
needed. These data are one of the bases for identifying content-compatible language objectives.
Language assessments are based on the objectives determined in the planning phase of
instruction. These objectives will most likely include both content-obligatory and
content-compatible language objectives. The planning phase should also include indicators of
how teachers will know that students have achieved these language objectives.

Because language objectives are most appropriate when tied to the linguistic demands of
content objectives, assessment of language skills may be made during the course of content
instruction. Checklists that specify language functions, grammar, and vocabulary needed for
content knowledge can be used for assessment of students during routine classroom activities. As
students demonstrate (or fail to demonstrate) their ability to use the requisite language skills,
 Teaching content through a second language 17

teachers can keep records of students’ language performance. Conferences with small groups of
students or individual students that focus on content are also a good source of data on students’
ability to understand and produce content-related language. Similarly, dialogue journals and
learning logs provide teachers with information about students’ ability to verbalize their content
knowledge through print. It is extremely important that teachers have clearly defined objectives
and criteria for students’ linguistic performance in order for the data-gathering activities just
described to be useful for assessing student progress and planning further instruction.

Classroom-based language assessments that are part of the instructional delivery system also
help to identify content-obligatory language objectives for future lessons and units. Classroom-
based language assessments help teachers know whether students have the language skills they
will need for academic performance precisely because the assessment ties language to its
purpose, which is content learning. Classroom-based language assessments are authentic in that
they measure student proficiency in the real contexts in which language use occurs (learning of
academic subject matter); they are integrative; and they assess the broad range of language skills
needed in the classroom. Such assessment, in essence, has content validity.

From the day-to-day instructional perspective, the integration of language assessment with
content assessment helps teachers—whether they are second language, grade-level, bilingual, two-
way, or foreign language immersion teachers—engage in a constant formative/diagnostic feedback
loop. Assessing students’ background knowledge prior to introducing new concepts is important
for all teachers. For those who teach content in a second language, assessing background
knowledge also means knowing the range of the students’ linguistic ability to handle the
concepts. Teachers also need to know the language demands of their curriculum objectives, the
extent to which students will be able to learn concepts and information from verbal input, and the
extent to which special strategies, manipulatives, and concrete materials will be necessary for
instructional delivery. Similarly, teachers need to know what supports must be provided to
students for them to be able to demonstrate their knowledge and learning, especially when
verbalization of what has been learned is not the best medium for getting and giving that
information.

It is clear, then, that as instruction progresses, and as teachers observe the growth of students
in the course of teaching and learning activities, a great deal of assessment data can be collected
about the achievement of both content and language objectives. These data provide important
information about individual students. In the aggregate, data from systematic observations,
checklists, portfolios, and teacher-made tests provide information about the effectiveness of the
instructional program.

Conclusion

Several implications emerge from the issues examined in this chapter. Perhaps the most salient is
that it may be necessary for teachers who work with second language learners to redefine their
 Teaching content through a second language 18

roles vis-à-vis their students and vis-à-vis one another. If the purpose of schooling is to educate
students, then all teachers must contribute to students’ achievement of curriculum objectives.
Language cannot stand apart from content learning; rather, language should be acquired through
content learning just as content may be learned through language. Teachers may no longer be able
to afford the luxury of a language curriculum separate from the demands of the larger school
curriculum. Instead, the language of content may be the most appropriate second language
curriculum. Survival language and grammar are important parts of the curriculum, but perhaps it
is equally, if not more, important that second language teachers be defined as teachers of
academic language.

Grade-level teachers, such as mainstream, bilingual, and two-way immersion teachers, will need
to have a clearer responsibility for the language development of their students. This means
ensuring that plans for every content lesson include language objectives as well. While content
objectives may drive decisions about instructional activities and materials, teachers will also need
to consider the academic language needed for successful mastery of current subject matter
instruction (content-obligatory language), the anticipated language needs of students in future
content lessons, and the language demands beyond the classroom (content-compatible language).

If teachers redefine their instructional responsibilities, they may also redefine their
relationships with one another. Clearly, in schools where second language teachers work
side-by-side with mainstream, bilingual, or two-way immersion teachers, there needs to be a
coordinated approach to meeting the needs of students. Collaborative planning among teachers
can ensure that the linguistic demands of content learning are addressed both in the second
language and the content classroom. Similarly, collaborative planning can enable teachers to
provide content-based lessons that support, reinforce, and coordinate with content lessons
provided by other teachers.

Teachers have a significant leadership role to play. They may need to take the initiative in
collaborative planning activities, in identifying the academic language skills students will need for
success in content learning, and in planning content-based lessons that support those in other
classrooms. They may also need to assist mainstream teachers to understand how theories of
second language acquisition can inform content lesson planning and to understand how content
lessons may be made more comprehensible to second language learners. Lastly, it may be
necessary to restructure how students are grouped for instruction in pullout programs (see
Chapter 8). Rather than group students by language proficiency, it may be more useful to group
them according to grade level (or rough approximations thereof). If second language teachers are
to function as teachers of language through content and plan collaboratively with content
teachers, then grade-appropriate content instruction will drive decisions about classroom
activities. As such, it may be more feasible to group students with similar content (and language)
needs than by overall language proficiency.

Second language teachers, bilingual teachers, grade-level teachers of minority language students,
and foreign language immersion teachers all face the challenge of enabling students to learn content
 Teaching content through a second language 19

in a language new to them. This chapter has attempted to describe how teachers can enhance their
effectiveness as teachers of language through content and of content through language, through the
effective planning, delivery, and assessment of instruction. Despite differences in their roles,
these teachers share a common goal: to develop students who demonstrate content knowledge,
skills, and concepts at or above grade level expectations; students who are proficient in at least
one language in addition to that spoken at home; and students who can function effectively and
comfortably in another culture.

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Cummins, J. (1984). Bilingualism and special education: Issues in assessment and pedagogy.
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 Teaching content through a second language 21

Genesee, F. (1985). Second language learning through immersion: A review of U.S. programs.
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Lambert, W. E. (1984). An overview of issues in immersion education. In Studies on immersion
education: A collection for U.S. educators (pp. 8-30). Sacramento: California State
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