Working on selected social studies texts with EFL upper-intermediate learners: combining oral and reading skills

Abstract

There have been many approaches to teaching English, be it as a foreign or as a second language. Some of them, such as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), put an emphasis on enhancing communicative competence in EFL classrooms, or advocate learning through the sense of touch as in the case of Total Physical Response (TPR). The last decades, however, have witnessed a prolonged interest in an approach called Content Based Instruction, Content- Based Language Teaching or Content and Language Integrated Learning. Both ELT theoreticians and practitioners have been influenced by the key assumption of CBI/CLIL according to which language and content are inextricably linked to each other, and therefore cannot be separated in the teaching and learning process. As it is claimed that social studies is the most suitable subject for language and content integration (King and Terry, 1995), the prime aim of the present chapter is to give an account of the way in which the integration of oral interaction and reading skills might be adopted as a general procedure in planning a set of EFL lessons based on social studies texts. This will be done by discussing an action research study conducted by the present author in one of Lublin upper-secondary schools.