Integrating Language and Content Instruction for Learning Persian as a Foreign Language: A Research-Based Framework for Instructional Design
摘要
This chapter aims to demonstrate how language educators can apply practices informed by the Content-Based Instruction (CBI) approach to teaching contemporary Persian as a foreign language. Throughout the chapter, we emphasize the benefits of integrating and balancing two distinctive pedagogical components: content and language instruction. We propose a research-based framework for instructional design, which is crafted to help educators achieve an optimal balance between instruction focused on meaning and instruction focused on the language itself. The chapter is divided into two main sections. Based on the latest research, the first section provides a comprehensive overview of the theoretical and methodological viewpoints that shape the Six-T’s approach to CBI for language teaching, thus helping instructors plan a content-based learning experience. The second section elaborates on the framework’s three crucial steps that, based on the Six-T’s approach to CBI, aid the language educator in designing instructional activities and utilize strategies and techniques that facilitate the integration of content and language. We encourage educators of Persian as a foreign language to consciously reflect on the process of integrating activities and tasks, both for facilitating learning progression in the target language and also for reducing the challenges associated with students performing the task. A properly contemplated integration process will strategically steer students toward effective learning practices and provide them with the tools to become more metacognitively aware and build learner autonomy.