The Puzzle of Learning a Language

The Puzzle of Learning a Language: Can Adjunct Models Help in Language Learning?

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How can research help the nation’s English language teachers who face the mounting challenge of educating language minority students to acquire the essential skills required to succeed academically? Students who attend tertiary education are sometimes underprepared to deal with university courses and this is compounded by the fact that they may be less proficient in English. As most university courses are taught in English, they need to develop skills that include being able to synthesize lectures and academic texts as well as to express information clearly in assignments and examinations in order to maximise their potential for academic success.

Research by Megawati Omar, Ph.D, of the English Department, Academy of Language Studies, provides insight into this by examining the effectiveness of Adjunct Language Instruction (ALI). ALI is one of the Content Based Instruction models.

ALI situates in such a way that the learning of English is conducted concurrently with a content subject, in this case, English (writing) and Physics, using the content subject materials in the English class. The test eventually suggested that the use of adjunct models has positive effects on language learning.