Section 5 –  Analysis of the situation

First data collection (Appendix 3)

The themes that come out from the data collected in this phase can be concentrated into two areas:

1)      the students’ attitude towards learning English

2)      the possibility to use English for learning contents

I think it is interesting to concentrate on these mainly because the investigation involves students who have a rather low level of language mastery (elementary – pre-intermediate), and one of the principal critic to Content Based Instruction is that it is not a suitable approach at lower levels of language competence.  

Attitude towards learning English at school – students’ trends[5]

Students learn English first of all “because it is an international language” (40 students), secondly “because it will be useful for the job I would like to do” (33 students), and then because “it is necessary for my future studies” (25 students). Only the younger students choose as their third favourite answer “because I can meet different people by speaking English”. Some say  “because it is the language of technology” (16 students), “because it is a school subject” (15 students). A few say “because I can learn new things by using English” (11 students). Only 4 out of 57 choose “because it is a means to communicate my ideas and opinions”.  Three younger students are the only ones to answer “because I like the countries where it is spoken and I would like to visit them”. So learning English seems to have essentially an instrumental value projected to the future. English is considered mainly in its vehicular function and the communication is not seen as a way for exchanging personal ideas and opinions or for getting to know the English speaking countries, but as a means to obtain achievements in work and study in the future. The Electronic Systems teacher says: “[I have accepted to carry out a part of my program in English] because most of the books and the data-sheet, not to mention many specific terms of my subject, are in English”, but then she adds: “The result [of the English/Systems module]is a clarification of the topics already studied … this clarification, both linguistic and technical, allows the student to better comprehend that culture is not only to know the technical solutions but also to be able to express them correctly through the language”, and the two Italian and History teachers interviewed tend to put in evidence the linguistic and cultural values of using the foreign language in relation to discovering “the affinities  and the differences between the two languages”, or the cultural enrichment this can bring to the students, as “in History teaching usually the national events are predominant, inside a European background, especially in the Medieval History that the students are studying this year. Deepening the British History together with the teacher of English means to get out of this point of view, and rediscover characters that acquire a new dimension”.

So, in the teachers’ opinions both the instrumental and cultural values of the foreign language are present. Of course they focus their attention on the content the students can learn or deepen, but when they say “language” they think of the power and the importance of verbal processing in general both of “technical solutions” and “British history”, without making any difference between Italian and English, except for the inevitable problems coming from the different degrees of mastery. I think the answers of my students to this question simply mirror the trend expressed by the adult society, composed of parents, teachers and economic and political authorities, according to which foreign languages, English in particular, like the computer skills, have to be learned in order to enrich one’s personal curriculum to find a good job. Anyway, I do not believe that, by recognizing the instrumental value of English, the students mean “for this reason we are highly motivated to learn it”, because my experience suggests it is not the case; they only want to say “for this reason we know we should study it”. However, a language remains the most powerful representation of the culture of the countries where it is spoken, even English studied instrumentally, so, both implicitly and explicitly, it conveys information about the mentality, the history and the way of living of the people who speak it as their mother tongue. In our lessons we use mainly authentic materials taken from the Web, or from text-books used in English or American schools, and very often students stop and discuss about similarities and differences they find in dealing with a given topic, or simply to ask questions about the country or the type of school system the text-book is used in. The use of authentic material can enlarge the limited view of English as a tool.

“Typical authentic materials include newspapers, magazines, TV shows, radio programs, films, and the like. Some imaginative CBI instructors have even taken chapters from textbooks used to educate native speakers in k-12 public schools…Using grade school or high school texts has a dual benefit. Such textbooks present simplified, yet authentic, input while providing students with insight into the world view of the culture being studied.” (Stryker and Leaver 1997 p.295)

The most important things to learn English are “to try to speak as much as possible” (33 students), “to have a good teacher” (30 students), “to know words and expressions” (29 students), “to know grammar rules” (25 students). Here the students say that the type of communication they immediately think of is oral and, probably consequent to this vision, vocabulary precedes grammar in relevance. An interesting point to consider is the great importance given to the teacher, “a good teacher”, which reveals to which extent the role of the didactic mediation is important to the students.

Only 12 students mention the use of teaching aids and this appears extremely significant because they use them at school constantly, especially computers and online resources, and they seem to appreciate them, nonetheless they say that teacher is much more important.

Learning the contents of a subject in English

According to 43 students it is “possible to learn a school subject in English”, only 4 disagree. They mention a lot of different school subjects but, except for a few students, they also point out the difficulties they have met or think they can meet in studying them through a foreign language. Here are some of the students perplexities:

“The most difficult thing should be to listen and understand the mathematical procedures expressed in English”

“…there would be some difficulties in using the specific terms of Biology”

“… the difficulty could be in finding the precise technical language to express myself”

“… there would be many difficulties in studying Chemistry in English, since it is already rather complicated in Italian”

“I would have some problems in comprehending; I wouldn’t be able to report it in English”

“I could have some difficulties when the teacher explains, if I don’t understand the words”

The difficulties are essentially four: comprehension of written texts or oral presentations, mastery of the specific lexis, complexity of the contents increased by the use of English, reporting the contents in English.

All the classes have already been involved in content based modules, one in particular has experienced a module of English and Mathematics that has resulted particularly demanding, but challenging at the same time, according to their answers:

“I think that word games and puzzles are a very good way to exercise the mind, but at the same time I have had some difficulties to express my solutions.”

“…these lessons have been different from the other ordinary lessons, in fact there have been competition and  involvement, which have made the lessons more lively and less boring.”

“..I have spoken more English and I tried to reason on some logic games and paradoxes”

“We have learned new things both of English and of Mathematics…”

“A negative aspect has been to try to find the solution and then to think it in English!!”

“The Maths teacher speaking in English was fantastic!!! I don’t find negative aspects, only the long and complicated reasoning which got entangled in my head!!!”

A difficult experience, but productive, challenging and involving, according to the students, which confirms that  “CBI itself promises to generate increased motivation among students; in content-based classrooms, students are exposed to complex information and are involved in demanding activities which can lead to intrinsic motivation. Motivation and interest arise partly from the recognition that learning is occurring and that it is worth the effort, and partly from the appropriate matching of increasing student knowledge of a topic with increasing task (or learning) challenges.” ( Snow and Brinton 1997, p. 20).

The same positive evaluations are shared by the content teachers and the reasons are similar to the students’ ones plus some didactic considerations related to content acquisition and development of cross-curricular skills: 

“I think that the necessary capacity of synthesis is improved in order to argument and analyse events in a foreign language”

 “I think that to explicit concepts through a language different from one’s own mother tongue requires a greater attention to the logic and the connection between the concepts”

“…the presentation of the topics are  more stimulating both for the teachers and for the      students, as the same topics could appear a bit boring and banal if they are always presented in the same way”

“The notions concerning the content can be increased, and even in case the number of new notions is not very big, they can result more developed and deepened. Surely, the skills related to the mastery and the use of the lexis variations result strengthened”

“…the students are solicited to speak more times an in a more autonomous way”.

The only negative aspect the teachers find is the risk to slow down their year school plan because handling some of the contents in English can take more time.

In conclusion, I can say that the ideas expressed about English learning by my students seem to indicate it is not considered a “tool” to be used in the present, which negativly affect their motivation. And this is comprehensibly realistic, since they are Italian speaking people living in Italy. The only real environment in which English might be used by my students in Italy is school, and the typical communication performed at school is about learning something. The students do not associate English to it simply because they do not normally use English to “learn things” but only to learn English itself. We might increase their motivation to learn English for present purposes by stressing the relationship between foreign language and learning contents.

The problem is whether this is practicable or not with relation to their level of language competence. Most of the students affirm it is possible after experiencing this for a few months, even if they mention some difficulties to cope with.