The Story behind the Book: Content-Based Instruction in Foreign Language Education (an affiliated book by Stryker and Leaver)

 

Today's blog post is the next in the series of book back stories and is the story behind Content-Based Instruction in Foreign Language Education by Stephen Stryker and Betty Lou Leaver. This book is an affiliated (recommended) book by MSI Press and can be purchased through Georgetown University Press or Amazon.

From a co-editor:

This book was quite a few years in the making. First, CBI was a rare course design back in the 1980s, when Steve brought it into the Spanish classes at the Foreign Service Institute and Betty Lou introduced it into the Russian program there. Rather than write a book about CBI, we wanted to amplify the theory with practical examples of successful CBI in language classes. We never thought it would take from 1989 until 1997 for enough teachers to adopt CBI in their classrooms to have enough examples (roughly a dozen) to comprise a book, but it did. 

During the eight years we worked on the book, we sought a publisher. It would be a first-time book for both editors. Earl Stevick, a highly published friend of ours, connected us with his own literary agent, for which we were very grateful. So kind! But that was Earl.

The agent did not locate a publisher right away. It is nearly always difficult to interest in what might be a seminal work though some will jump at the chance (and risk). Ultimately, one of the authors interested Georgetown University Press in the book, and the rest is history (except for the editors having to (literally) tie one of the chapter authors to get him to finish his chapter to meet deadline -- but that is another story.

 

Book Description:

This book offers concrete and practical ideas for implementing content-based instruction―using subject matter rather than grammar―through eleven case studies of cutting-edge models in a broad variety of languages, academic settings, and levels of proficiency.

The highly innovative models illustrate content-based instruction programs for both commonly and less-commonly taught languages―Arabic, Croatian, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Russian, Serbian, and Spanish―and for proficiency levels ranging from beginners to fluent speakers. They include single-teacher and multi-teacher contexts and such settings as typical language department classrooms, specialty schools, intensive language programs, and university programs in foreign languages across the curriculum.

All of the contributors are pioneers and practitioners of content-based instruction, and the methods they present are based on actual classroom experiences. Each describes the rationale, curriculum design, materials, and evaluation procedures used in an actual curriculum and discusses the implications of the approach for adult language acquisition.

Check out a similar story: The Story behind the Book: Task-Based Instruction by Leaver and Willis
For more posts about this book, click HERE.

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