Content-Based Learning through Students Multiple Disciplines

In Korean college ESL classes, students attend with multiple purposes toward the target language. The students gather from multiple disciplines from engineering to fashion design and the English fluency level also varies among the students. At first, the movie Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was utilized in order to span out the interests of the varied students. An interesting fact was observed from the students’ response to the movie. Each class had a session to provide feedback about the movie, and students response were different based on their major. Various responses led up naturally active participation and students immersed in the movie. A language is a tool (Essays, 2013), and it is important to use it rather than learning the structure of the target language. The differences in the feedback sparked the interest in the movie and help the students to focus on the content of the language (Kasper, 1997).
The purpose of the class is to teach language, however without the focus on content, it is easy to see students going to the rabbit hole once again; memorizing vocabulary, expressions, grammar, etc. The focus on content, but content coming from the students’ perspectives gives multiple interests to the students. This approach helps the diverse and broad class to focus on the class. In this presentation, the process of language learning through movie clips on YouTube will be shown along with what type of contributions students brought to the content-based instruction style of language learning. In addition, not only useful strategies to identify and maintain students’ interest but also multiple tools and resources to help students focus on the content will be introduced.