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The Effectiveness of a Theme-based Syllabus

for Young L2 Learners
a a a
Cem Alptekin , Gülcan Erçetin & Yasemin Bayyurt
a
Department of Foreign Language Education, Faculty of Education,
Bogaziçi University, Bebek, Istanbul, Turkey
Version of record first published: 22 Dec 2008.

To cite this article: Cem Alptekin , Gülcan Erçetin & Yasemin Bayyurt (2007): The Effectiveness of a Theme-
based Syllabus for Young L2 Learners, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 28:1, 1-17

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 The Effectiveness of a Theme-based
Syllabus for Young L2 Learners
Cem Alptekin, Gülcan Erçetin and Yasemin Bayyurt
Department of Foreign Language Education, Faculty of Education,
Bogaziçi University, Bebek, Istanbul, Turkey
This paper reports a longitudinal quasiexperimental study that investigated the
effectiveness of a theme-based syllabus versus an essentially grammatical syllabus


with functional elements for young Turkish learners of English (aged 10 11) in a
primary school setting. The theme-based syllabus rested on two different theoretical
premises, one being Widdowson’s (1990) notion of systemic versus schematic
knowledge in language learning and the other being Cummins’ (1981) two-
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dimensional concept of language proficiency, involving basic interpersonal/commu-

nicative skills and cognitive/academic language proficiency. Two intact groups were
randomly assigned to one of these syllabus types and received instruction for two
years. Results indicate that the experimental group outperformed the control group
both in listening and reading/writing skills.

doi: 10.2167/jmmd470.1

Keywords: theme-based syllabus, content-based instruction, young EFL learners

Introduction
Language educationalists, such as Van Lier (1996) and Swain (1996), have
suggested that L2 instruction at school is quite beneficial if it is linked to
curricular content. The effectiveness of content and language integrated
teaching, commonly referred to as theme-based instruction or content-based
instruction (CBI), stems from two main factors. One is that language is learnt
effectively when the student’s focus is on meaning rather than form. The social
and academic contexts in which the learners find themselves provide
interesting resources for learning language while language itself becomes a
medium for learning relevant content. As such, content offers a motivational
and cognitive basis for language acquisition, with students actively construct-
ing meaning both conceptually and linguistically by relating the new data to
what they already know. Secondly, CBI’s approach to integrate content and
language does away with the principal deficiency of traditional language
teaching programmes, which has been to concentrate exclusively on language
development often at the expense of learners’ conceptual development in the
meantime. CBI posits that language and content should not be separated, a
position that is akin to L1 acquisition. As content becomes more conceptually
difficult for the learners to process, the language that construes the conceptual
content becomes more complex as well. Thus, CBI provides the natural
educational framework in which cognitive and linguistic factors develop
simultaneously.

0143-4632/07/01 001-17 $20.00/0 – 2007 C. Alptekin et al .

J. OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT Vol. 28, No. 1, 2007

1
 2 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Theoretical models of integrating language and content have been devel-

oped, each focusing on the issue from a different perspective. Mohan (1986),
for example, has offered a conceptual framework for the integration of the two
domains through the correspondence between epistemological structures (e.g.
classification) and linguistic features. Chamot and O’Malley (1989) have
devised the ‘Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach’ (CALLA),
which integrates subject content, language and language-learning strategies.
Snow et al. (1989) have developed a model in which the language curriculum,
the content curriculum, and an assessment of the learners’ academic and
linguistic needs provide the basis for the language-learning objectives of the
CBI programme.
In practice, however, what is observed in the field is the presence of a
number of CBI approaches, which are all modelled on the relative success of
immersion programmes in North America (e.g. Cummins, 1987; Genesee,
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1987; Krashen, 1989). As Lightbown and Spada (1999: 130) indicate, overall
findings of the research on immersion programmes ‘provide convincing
evidence that these programs are among the most successful large-scale
second language programs in existence’, although some focus on form
(Schleppegrell et al. , 2004) as well as output (Swain, 1985) seems to be
beneficial as well.
The first CBI approach is theme-based instruction, where the language
syllabus is organised around curricular topics which form the context through
which both language- and content-related activities are conducted. The second
one is sheltered content instruction, where the courses are taught by a subject
teacher who adapts the content to learners’ proficiency levels. The last one is
the adjunct model, where students are concurrently enrolled in a content
course and a language class with thematic links established through the
cooperation of content and language teachers.
It has been indicated that, despite their variation in form and focus, all CBI
approaches are necessarily theme-based. As such, both sheltered and adjunct
instruction models are not actually alternatives to theme-based instruction, but
rather two approaches of theme-based instruction (Stoller, 2002).
CBI has become quite popular at primary level since the 1990s due to its
often-cited advantages for young learners. In addition to its institutionalisation
in a number of K-12 school settings in North America, it is being tried in some
European countries such as Hungary, Spain and Finland (Johnson & Swain,
1997). The general belief is that theme-based instruction provides improved
motivation for learning as well as improved learning because the integration of
language and content through a careful selection of curricular topics enables
students to have a contextual, meaningful, purposeful and enjoyable learning
experience. As such, proficiency in the L2 is said to develop faster in theme-
based instruction than in regular language classes (Julkunen, 1999), where
young learners simply fail to be motivated by a language teaching process,
which they perceive as an end in itself.
One way of integrating content and language at primary level is to
determine the points where L2 objectives can converge with the content areas
of the school curriculum. L2 objectives can then be arranged in accordance
with subject area objectives, and a theme-based syllabus matching language
 Effectiveness of a Theme-based Syllabus 3

form and function with these educational objectives may be designed to cater
to the needs of L2 learners. In this way, learners can use the L2 to express
thematic knowledge they have acquired in the L1 from identical areas of the
school curriculum. For example, functional, structural and lexical content from
the L2 related to the ‘family’ theme in the curriculum can be taught when the
social studies content, conveyed in learners’ L1, relates to their family and to
families in general. Hence, not only can a theme-based syllabus enable learners
to establish ties between their school subjects and their L2 learning experience,
but it can also reinforce content knowledge acquired in the L1 and accelerate
conceptual development.
Despite the overall support for theme-based instruction coming from L2
pedagogical circles, there are few empirical studies concerning its benefits over
alternative approaches at primary school levels (Grabe & Stoller, 1997). In fact,
most of the work done in the field is based on models designed for tertiary
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education contexts (Wesche, 1993), with the assumption that the findings can
be representative of potential outcomes in primary and secondary education
contexts. Furthermore, unlike in foreign-language contexts, the studies
themselves mostly come from bilingual or second-language school settings
where both the academic and the wider community environments provide rich
input.
Given the limited scope of previous research on the issue, it was deemed
appropriate to evaluate the effectiveness of a theme-based syllabus, envisaging
topic-based instruction, compared to a predominantly structural syllabus,
involving the teaching of the formal and functional features of the L2 as an end
in itself. The L2 in question was English, whose instruction begins as of Grade
4 in Turkish public schools.
The theme-based syllabus, whose theoretical model was previously devel-
oped by two of the researchers (Bayyurt & Alptekin, 2000), paralleled the
topical content of subject areas in the curriculum of the Turkish Ministry of
National Education. It should be noted that the use of this curriculum is
mandatory in all primary and secondary schools in Turkey. As such, creating
cross-curricular links for teaching English in a theme-based framework
requires the syllabus designer to take into consideration the topical content
of the school subjects inherent in the ministry’s curriculum.
In addition to using appropriately selected topics from the ministry’s
curriculum, the theme-based syllabus was firmly grounded in two theoretical
constructs, one being Widdowson’s (1990) notion of the dichotomy between
systemic and schematic knowledge, and the other Cummins’ (1981) two-
dimensional concept of language proficiency, involving cognitive demand and
(de)contextualised knowledge.1
To begin with, Widdowson argues that L2 learning can be stultified if the
systemic (i.e. linguistic) knowledge to which the learners are exposed cannot
be related to their schematic knowledge, which is their culture-specific
knowledge resting on shared experience and socially sanctioned reality.
Schematic knowledge is therefore a necessary source of reference in a
particular community by which people organise the world and communicate
with others in what they regard as normal and predictable ways. According to
Widdowson (1990: 105), ‘the more familiar the schematic content . . . the less
 4 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

reliance needs to be placed on systemic knowledge, and vice versa’. Thus, for
proper acquisition to occur, learners need to be able to conceptually link
features of the language with their world vision and knowledge. If the
schematic content is already in the mind of the learner, the achievement of
pragmatic meaning will evolve by matching up the linguistic elements of the
systemic code with the schematic elements of the context. It follows that when
students learn content information in their subject areas via the L1, they
become familiar with academic discourse which combines both systemic and
schematic features of their native language and culture. The same process of
integrating linguistic form and academic context needs to be achieved in the
L2 as well in order to optimise meaningful learning.
It is interesting to note that Widdowson’s important notion of integrating
schematic and systemic information with a view to making L2 learning more
efficient has not been taken into consideration in attempts to link CBI with
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data from cognitive psychology. While serious efforts have been made to cater
to the realisation of knowledge structures through the integration of language
and content (e.g. Mohan, 1986), the issue of forming language structures
through the integration of learners’ schematic knowledge and relevant as well
as meaningful content has not been focalised.
In the same vein, Cummins (1981) points to the importance of context in
meaningful learning leading to L2 proficiency. He views proficiency as
consisting of basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS), which are
language skills used in interpersonal relations or in informal situations whose
linguistic and extra-linguistic content provide relatively easy access to mean-
ing. Yet proficiency further involves cognitive academic language proficiency
(CALP), which is the language of academic content areas, often less
contextually rich and more cognitively demanding than BICS. Cummins
suggests that BICS are normally easy to learn, taking only a couple of years,
but that CALP is more complex, taking from five to seven years and
necessitating formal instruction.2
Cummins’ model has been quite influential in the development of CBI. Met
(1991), for instance, in explaining the implications of the model for elementary
school foreign language instruction, pointed to the need for teachers to move
language practice from the context-embedded and cognitively undemanding
tasks associated with BICS to the context-embedded and cognitively demand-
ing tasks associated with CALP. Similarly, Short (1994) based her research
framework of integrating language, culture and social studies for L2 learners
on Cummins’ theoretical premise of social studies normally involving more
cognitively demanding and context-reduced CALP type of communication.
Interesting applications of the model in the L2 classroom are described in
detail in Cline and Frederickson (1996). Both Grabe and Stoller (1997) and
Snow et al . (1989) view the model as providing theoretical impetus for
considering the integration of language and content instruction.
CBI appears to have the potential to accelerate and facilitate L2 acquisition if
it combines Widdowson’s integration of schematic and systemic information
and Cummins’ notion of challenging the learner cognitively while providing
contextual scaffolds. This potential arises from the learner’s being exposed to
an epistemologically and linguistically authentic learning context and to a
 Effectiveness of a Theme-based Syllabus 5

cognitively meaningful content. Learners will be able to call on their schematic

knowledge, developed in the L1, to cover the same or similar content material
in the L2, thereby learning the relevant systemic features of the target language
within relevant discourse contexts. Their focus, as such, will be more on the
cognitively challenging systemic features rather than schematic content, which
would already be a part of their internalised knowledge.
To sum up, the theme-based syllabus used in the present study took the
following educational criteria into consideration:

(1) Language both invokes and provides context (Kumaravadivelu, 2003). As

such, the young learners’ topical knowledge (e.g. health) acquired in a
given subject area in Turkish becomes the schematic basis for teaching
the systemic knowledge of English shortly thereafter. One may view this
process as linguistic features pairing up with meaningful academic
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content or academic content contextualising linguistic input.

(2) With context thematically familiarised, learners are better equipped to
tackle the cognitive demands of the English systemic features.
Thus, it is possible that young learners who are taught English using a theme-
based syllabus are likely to develop their English proficiency more smoothly
than those using a traditional syllabus such as a grammatical one. This is the
hypothesis that we set out to test.

Method
Participants
A total of 97 Turkish students took part in this study over a period of two
years. They had already been assigned to classes when the study started. A
survey conducted by the researchers revealed that they all came from poor
socioeconomic backgrounds and none had previous experience in learning
English (zero beginner). For this reason, two classes were randomly desig-
nated as control and treatment groups. There were 50 students in the control
group and 47 in the experimental group. Subjects’ ages ranged between 10 and
11. By the end of the data collection procedure, four had dropped from each
group due to moving to other schools. Data for three students in the control
group had to be eliminated because they were incomplete. Thus, there were
43 students in each group in the final analysis.

Instruments
Grammatical syllabus
The control group was exposed to an essentially grammatical syllabus
according to which coursebooks and methodological guidelines were pre-
pared by the Turkish Ministry of National Education. The focus was on formal
features with lip-service paid to language functions. The students learned
the L2 (English) through grammatical structures as the central organising
features of the curriculum (e.g. present progressive
/comparatives
/simple
present tense
/past progressive tense). By focusing mainly on structure, the
 6 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

grammatical syllabus failed to create a meaningful language learning

experience for the students. They instead practised newly presented language
forms through mechanical exercises and had to listen to the teacher’s
metalanguage on the correct use of these forms (see Appendix 1).
Normally, the teacher used the ministry’s fourth-grade English textbook,
which was based on the ministry’s syllabus. In Unit 2, for example, she first
introduced the relevant classroom vocabulary to the students in order for
these vocabulary items (e.g. pen, pencil, book, desk) to provide a context for
the implementation of the unit objectives that were essentially grammatical
in nature. The specific aim in this context was to familiarise the students
with the target structures ‘This is/These are’ in their affirmative, negative
and interrogative forms through a set of sentences containing these
structures and words describing classroom objects (e.g. ‘This is a desk’).
Both Turkish (the students’ and teacher’s native language) and simpli-
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fied metalanguage in English were used to explain the transformation from

the affirmative to the negative or the interrogative case. Pair work,
individual practice, and at times, structurally focused games were used to
achieve the desired goal. These were followed by the reading of short texts
and the writing of simple sentences, all of which contained the target
structures.

Theme-based syllabus
As indicated previously, the theme-based syllabus used in the present study
paralleled the topical content of subject areas in the curriculum of the Turkish
Ministry of National Education. Science and social studies were the broad
subject areas from which the topics were selected. Topics such as heat or health
were normally introduced to the students in their regular subject matter
classes conducted in Turkish about a week before they were covered in their
English classes, using a variety of tasks and activities (see Appendix 2 for a list
of topics in Grades 4 and 5).
To illustrate, after fourth-grade students studied wildlife in their science
lesson in Turkish, the English teacher presented the same information in
English, using flashcards showing each animal with its lexical identification in
English. Once students learned the name of each animal, animal pictures were
placed on various spots on a map of Turkey, which initiated a lively discussion
not only on wildlife habitats and sanctuaries but also on each animal’s
characteristics and behaviour. The discussion inevitably warranted the use of
the simple present tense for both copula be and relevant adjectives (e.g. ‘Bears
are strong.’), the use of appropriate verbs that normally collocate with ‘nature
vocabulary’ (e.g. ‘Bears live in forests.’) and the use of some ‘Wh-questions’
(e.g. ‘Where do bears live’?). When necessary, the teacher provided the right
word or structure for the given context, and it was clear that the students were
actually preoccupied with the content-based tasks while incidentally acquiring
the language integrated with the specific theme. A short reading text on
wildlife in Turkey was then used in class to promote further discussion on the
subject, followed by a sentence-level theme-based writing assignment to be
done as homework.
 Effectiveness of a Theme-based Syllabus 7

Language proficiency test

The Cambridge Young Learners English Test (YLE) was used to measure the
subjects’ proficiency in English. The test is designed by Cambridge ESOL to
‘assess the English of primary learners between the ages of 7 and 12’. The test
consists of three levels: Starters, Movers and Flyers. In this study, only three
parallel forms of the Starters test were used. The Starters is considered
equivalent to level A1 of the Council of Europe’s Common European
Framework of Reference for Languages.3 It consists of three parts: listening,
reading/writing and speaking. Listening and reading/writing scores were
used in this study. The speaking section was not administered for reasons
of administrative practicality. Each part contained 20 questions, each worth
1 point. Thus, the highest possible score on the test was 40.
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Procedures
This was a longitudinal study that lasted approximately two academic
years. A quasi-experimental design was used, where the groups were
randomly assigned to the levels of the independent variable. The study started
in September 2002 and lasted until June 2004. The control group was taught
using the curriculum and the materials developed by the Ministry of National
Education. The experimental group was taught using the theme-based
syllabus and relevant content materials developed by the researchers. Both
groups received two hours of English per week from the same teacher. The
students’ language development was measured three times throughout the
study using the Cambridge YLE Test: at the end of the first school year and at
the beginning and end of the second school year. Moreover, the researchers
carried out semi-structured interviews with randomly selected students from
each group at the end of both the first and the second school years. The
interviews took place one week after the test was administered.
The teacher who participated in the study carefully prepared the unit
lessons according to the requirements of the particular syllabus. She was
assisted by the researchers, who refrained from showing a penchant for either
type of syllabus. The researchers further met with her every week to discuss
the lesson plans, their implementation, and student feedback. Her perfor-
mance in each group was periodically observed by one of the researchers, who
ensured that she did not exhibit a preference for one type of instructional
approach over the other.

Data analysis
Listening and reading/writing test scores were analysed by a 2 (Group) /3
(Time) mixed design ANOVA. As two ANOVAs were conducted, a Bonferroni
adjustment was made on the significance level, which was set at 0.025.
The qualitative data comprised the semi-structured interviews with the
students. Interviews were transcribed with a view to comprehending the
students’ perceptions of the relationship between the type of syllabus
(i.e. theme-based versus grammatical) used and their L2 learning experiences.
 8 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Results
The findings are discussed separately for listening and reading/writing
skills.

Listening
Table 1 provides the means (M ) and the standard deviations (sd) on the
listening test. Time 1 refers to the first measurement at the end of two
academic semesters, Time 2 refers to the second measurement at the beginning
of the second academic year after the summer vacation, and Time 3 refers to
the third measurement at the end of the second school year.
As Table 1 shows, the experimental group performed consistently better
than the control group at each measurement. A 2/3 mixed-design ANOVA
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with group as the between-subjects variable and time as the within-subjects

variable was conducted on the means. The assumptions of the ANOVA
regarding homogeneity of variance and sphericity were sustained. Table 2
shows the results of the ANOVA test.
The results revealed a main effect for group, F (1, 84) /11.68, p B/0.001, h2 /
0.12, and a main effect for time, F(2, 168) /85.43, p B/0.001, h2 /0.50. However,

Table 1 Descriptive statistics for the listening test

Time Group M sd
1 Experimental 2.47 1.65
Control 1.40 1.33
2 Experimental 2.63 1.33
Control 2.07 1.33
3 Experimental 5.28 2.39
Control 4.40 1.99

Table 2 ANOVA summary table for listening scores

Source df SS MS F p
Between subjects
Group 1 45.21 45.209 11.68 0.001
Error (between) 84 325.07 3.870
Within subjects
Time 2 424.78 212.388 85.43 0.001
Time*group 2 2.88 1.442 0.58 0.56
Error(within) 168 417.67 2.486
 Effectiveness of a Theme-based Syllabus 9

6
Experimental
Control
5
Listening scores

0
1 2 3
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Time

Figure 1 Plot of means for the listening test

the interaction between group and time was not significant. The plot of means is
provided in Figure 1.
As shown in the plot, the experimental group performed significantly better
than the control group. Moreover, both groups showed a similar trend across
the measurements. Post-hoc comparisons using the Tukey procedure revealed
that the groups did not demonstrate significant gains from the first to the
second measurement. However, their performance on the third measurement
was significantly better compared to the first two measurements. This, in fact,
became apparent in the students’ self-reports as well. They felt more
comfortable with and confident in understanding recorded samples of speech
from the test.

Reading/Writing
Table 3 provides the means and standard deviations on the reading/writing
test for the three different measurements. The means for the reading/writing
test were higher than those of the listening test for both groups. However, the
experimental group outperformed the control group on this test as well.
In order to determine whether the means were significantly different, a 2 /
3 mixed-design ANOVA with group as the between-subjects variable and time
as the within-subjects variable was conducted. The assumptions of homo-
geneity of variance and sphericity were sustained. Table 4 shows the results of
the ANOVA test.
The results revealed a significant main effect for group only, F (2,84) /5.21,
p B/0.025, h2 /0.05. Other effects were not significant. The main effect for
group suggests that the experimental group performed significantly better
than the control group regardless of the time of measurement. Figure 2
provides the plot of means.
As shown in Figure 2, despite the experimental group’s superior
performance over that of the control group, both groups’ English scores
 10 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development
Table 3 Descriptive statistics for the reading/writing test

Time Group M SD
1 Experimental 8.14 3.06
Control 7.74 3.47
2 Experimental 9.26 3.15
Control 7.44 2.95
3 Experimental 8.72 3.28
Control 7.14 2.09

Table 4 ANOVA summary table for reading/writing scores

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Source df SS MS F p
Between subjects
Group 1 34.33 33.33 5.21 0.02
Error (between) 84 553.98 6.59
Within subjects
Time 2 9.78 4.89 1.26 0.29
Time*group 2 24.89 12.45 3.28 0.04
Error (within) 168 650.00 3.87

in reading and writing seem to have somewhat decreased in the final

measurement
unlike the improvement witnessed in listening comprehen-
sion. This interesting phenomenon may be attributed to the groups’ being
exposed to a sudden curricular shift in the fifth grade from cognitively
undemanding and context-embedded to cognitively demanding and context-
reduced disciplinary learning in their science and social studies courses,
causing them to spend less time on their literacy skills in English, which called
for a significant amount of homework to be done outside the class. While such
homework demands were not often met due to students’ prioritising work for
their other subjects, the in-class focus on English aural
oral skills continued,
which most likely enabled students to feel more confident and competent in
understanding recorded samples of speech from the test. In fact, interviews
with students revealed that they were not too happy with the increasing
difficulty of the subjects in science and social sciences. One student, for
instance, commented that their subject teachers in the fifth grade asked more
complex questions than those she faced in the fourth grade. Another lamented
that he had to spend more time reading in science and social sciences because
of the increasing demands placed on students by subject teachers and that this
caused him to pay less attention to English. It is likely that the students’
English scores suffered from this rapid conceptual move to the abstract, which
 Effectiveness of a Theme-based Syllabus 11

9.5
Experimental

Control

Reading/Writing scores
9.0

8.5

8.0

7.5

7.0
1 2 3
Time
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Figure 2 Plot of means for the reading/writing test

necessitated the use of more CALP than BICS type of Turkish and which
resulted in less attention being paid to English in general and English literacy
skills in particular.

Discussion and Conclusion

In general, the results of the study indicate that young EFL learners
using a theme-based syllabus develop their English proficiency better than
those using an essentially grammatical syllabus. This is true not only for the
development of listening but also for reading and writing. Moreover,
irrespective of the time of measurement, the experimental group’s super-
iority over the control group continues. All this suggests that CBI enables
the learners to relate the systemic features of English to what they have
already internalised as schematic knowledge of the given topic in Turkish.
In fact, several students in the experimental group expressed, as part of
their self-reporting on their English learning, how fruitful it was to study
science and English together as if they were one and the same. As one
student put it,
We like it a lot when our (English) teacher covers topics that we already
covered in other courses. . . . We improve our English further . . . , and we
develop our vocabulary knowledge. . . . For instance, when our (English)
teacher asks a question about a topic we learned in science, we
immediately translate what we already know into English and give an
answer to our teacher. . . . So we learn English better. The topic gets
clearer in our mind both in English and Turkish and it becomes harder to
forget because we repeat the subject.
It is possible that learners’ exposure to subject matter content in Turkish
reduces the cognitive demands of the learning tasks in English, as their focus
tends to shift from tackling both schematic and systemic problems to
essentially systemic ones, as Widdowson has suggested. In addition, the
 12 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

chiefly academic nature of the subject matter with which the learners in
the experimental group deal enables them not only to get acquainted with the
CALP type of language but also to activate their higher-order thinking skills,
such as hypothesising, generalising, predicting, classifying and inferring. As
such, the transition from processing contextualised to decontextualised data in
the L2 becomes smoother.
Finally, the interviews suggest that, true to Cummins’ predictions, L2
learners, even in an input-poor environment such as the EFL setting in Turkey,
find CBI more cognitively challenging than grammar-based courses. The
subject matter in CBI provides a natural academic context in which the
learners’ schematic knowledge of the given topic blends with the L2 systemic
data, giving them a sense of accomplishment based on the impression that
they have studied authentic content material in the L2: ‘We like studying the
mountains, rivers, and plains that we have learned in our geography class, this
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time in English. Thanks to English we learn better what we have already

learned’. By contrast, grammar-based instruction, focusing on the formal
features of the L2 as an end in itself, appears artificial and is therefore
demotivating: ‘I want to talk to tourists’, says one student, ‘but the teacher is
asking ‘‘it is’’ or ‘‘it are’’’.
Of course, no study goes without limitations. Although this one was a
longitudinal study, the amount of time allocated for the implementation of the
treatment was limited to two contact hours per week due to constraints
imposed by school policy. Thus, the effect of the treatment in input-rich
conditions should be explored in a further study. Furthermore, the study could
be replicated with students who do not necessarily come from a low
socioeconomic background or who are not zero beginners so that one could
actually assess the effectiveness of theme-based instruction in L2 acquisition
with different learner profiles in contexts other than English-dominant ones. A
final issue that should be addressed concerns the syllabi used in this study in
that the researchers had no control over the choice of either the grammatical
syllabus for English or the subject-based syllabus in Turkish, which were
designed by the Ministry and meant to be used in all state schools across
Turkey. Consequently, the theme-based syllabus for English had to be restricted
to the content of the topics selected and organised by the Ministry for its science
and social studies courses in Turkish. As such, the content matter in a given
area, true to CBI principles, dictated the selection and sequence of language
items to be taught. However, given that the hypothesis of the present study was
partially based on Cummins’ concept of language proficiency (see earlier
discussion), it would have been more appropriate to have the opportunity to
select the topics so as to realise student exposure to instances of language which
gradually moved from its highly contextualised and concrete uses to those that
are relatively less contextualised and more abstract.

Acknowledgements
This study was supported by a grant (02HD601) from the Bogaziçi
University Research Fund. The authors would like to thank two anonymous
reviewers for their useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
 Effectiveness of a Theme-based Syllabus 13
Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Professor Cem Alptekin,
Department of Foreign Language Education, Faculty of Education, Bogaziçi
University, 34342 Bebek, Istanbul, Turkey ([email protected]).

Notes
1. A more detailed account of the theoretical premises of a theme-based syllabus is
given in Bayyurt and Alptekin (2000).
2. Cummins (1991: 71) later labelled BICS and CALP as conversational and academic
language proficiency.
3. More information on Cambridge YLE Tests can be found on the following website:
http://www.cambridgeesol.org/support/dloads/yle/yle_hb_03.pdf.

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 Effectiveness of a Theme-based Syllabus 15

Appendix 1: Extracts from the Syllabus Prescribed by the

Ministry of National Education
4th Grade
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 16 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

5th Grade
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 Effectiveness of a Theme-based Syllabus 17

Appendix 2: Topics Included in the Theme-based Syllabus

4th Grade 5th Grade
Family Viruses and bacteria
Professions Diseases
Classroom objects Light and sound
Pets & wild animals Heat
Natural life Motion and force
Weather Climate
Seasons Geography of Turkey
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The city
Matter
Food
Body parts