CBI+methods+and+approaches

Functional Linguistics Approach
"Focus-on-form approaches are typically not informed by a theory of language that is discourse and meaning based and instead view language acquisition as the accumulation of sets of structures and rules. The alternative view presented here, based on a functional theory of language, sees how the linguistic features of disciplinary texts construe particular kinds of meanings. This makes a focus on language central to the teaching of disciplinary content." (Schleppegrell, 2004, p. 70)

"Rather than making the content less difficult, we suggests that a functional analysis can provide tools for helping students work with grade-level textbook material and at the same time develop critical language awareness." (Schleppegrell, 2004, p. 70)

"These approaches to disciplinary language, like ours, draw on a theory of language that perceives how content is construed through language and how language realizes particular perspectives and points of view. This perspective focuses on analysis of texts, looking at language not as a set of words and structures but as a set of choices from the grammatical systems of English that draw meaning from the situations in which they are produced, the forms they take, and the relationships they establish between speaker-writers and readers-listeners, as well as from the ideas they construe (content). Because language is inseparable from social contexts and always makes meanings relevant to particular situations and cultures, we are not integrating language and content. Language and content are already integrated." (Schleppegrell, 2004, p. 89)