Developing a CBI Curriculum: Challenges and Outcomes

Basing instructions on content rather than language criteria is one of the curriculum decisions that the teachers at the Foreign Languages Unit at the University Department of Professional Studies, University of Split, Croatia have been developing for some time now. There are several reasons for this decision. Firstly, being involved in the Erasmus programme of student and teacher mobility within the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union there is a higher occurrence of student and teacher exchanges and attendances of international or joint programs and semesters abroad with English as the language of instruction. Secondly, with opening up of job opportunities for our students throughout Europe we believe that using English language as a tool for further developing specific education is helping not only in specialist academic areas of study, but also in demonstrating communicative ability and skills in potential future jobs where English is the language of profession. Keeping these points in mind, relevant teaching materials of English for Specific Purposes have been used depending on the specialist areas of study. However, a recent proficiency analysis of specific vocabulary acquisition (Business English) as well as a study of students’ attitudes towards the language (Kosanović, Milun, 2013) showed that the ESP courses that focus on a broad range of typical business contexts (such as work, money, banking, advertising, business) rather than content specific situations confirm students’ restricted ability in the spectrum of specific language and skills required, especially in those cases where students were already struggling with general low level of language proficiency. Results obtained also indicate the need to reevaluate our ESP courses and redesign our curriculum since they do not fully fulfill our academic needs. Therefore, a study of various types of content-based instruction (CBI) as well as the CBI curriculum at the Intensive English Language Institute at Midwestern State University, Texas, USA might be a possible course which will benefit our students more directly. Discussing the methodology employed, giving sample lessons and outcomes, discussing the student’s responses to this approach will provide an insight into challenges and outcomes of this model of instruction.