Great Idea: Integrating content and language

What is integrating content and language?

Integrating content and language means identifying the vocabulary, grammar, and textual features that multilingual learners who are acquiring English must access and use in their learning across the curriculum, and providing the scaffolding they need based on their proficiency in English.

Each school subject, from literacy learning in the early years and KS1, to geography, art and science in KS4, has its own vocabulary, grammar, and ways of constructing key texts. For example, the language and text features of fairy tales are very different from the language and form of a science report on data collected about the climate crisis.

One of The Bell Foundation’s five key principles of an inclusive EAL pedagogy for multilingual learners is ‘an integrated focus on content and language’. This means that English language learning and development should be integrated and embedded in the curriculum within language-rich mainstream classes.

Examples of activities

• Using drawing to support vocabulary development: In KS2 maths, learners can develop their knowledge of the properties of 2D shapes, while using new vocabulary to describe the properties. After the teacher has demonstrated shapes and their properties visually, learners new to English can work in pairs or small groups and observe a fluent English speaker draw a shape, name it, and give the number of sides and angles and the length of sides. Then they can draw a shape and practise using the new vocabulary as they describe their shape. Some learners might need additional scaffolding, for example placing labels with shape names on the correct drawing and employ previous learning in their preferred language if they’ve learnt the topic before, to embed an understanding of the terms in English.
• Using sequencing to tell a story: In KS1 literacy work, learners can pair up to retell a story they have listened to, using pictures in the correct sequence. After the teacher has told or read the story using pictures, actions, and objects from the story to enable meaning making, the teacher can provide a set of pictures of key events from the story which the learners then arrange in the correct sequence. The learners can then match simple captions in English to the correct picture. The captions should use key vocabulary from the story to reinforce words the learners have heard in the telling, which they can then practise using.
• Using sentence stems to annotate a piece of art: In KS3 art, teachers can supply sentence stems for practice using the language of annotation. For example, ‘I used the medium of …. because ….’, ‘I used the colour palette to show…’. Teachers can identify key terms for the medium or art form, and learners can practise using this key vocabulary and language structures including the past tense, and connectives, in the context of a piece of work they have produced.
• Using an anti-quiz to prepare for GCSE questions: In KS4 geography, the teacher can supply a set of answers to typical questions in GCSE papers and ask learners to think of possible questions that might lead to those answers. This activity helps learners focus on the language used in assessment in this subject and to use translation into a language they know, to embed their understanding of words likely to come up in questions. This understanding can be strengthened by looking at actual questions from past papers, and focusing on key vocabulary used (Conteh 2019), including words that often go together in the subject, for example ‘scarce resources’ or ‘global development’. Learners who are entitled to use a bilingual dictionary in exams as part of their access arrangements can use their dictionary in this activity, as they practise identifying key words in a question and checking the meaning.

How integrating content and language work

Mainstream lessons provide the context or framework for learning the language associated with the topic being covered. Teachers and learners fluent in English provide models of how language is used, how words are used and pronounced, and how texts can be understood and constructed.

Teachers need to know each learner’s level of proficiency in English to identify key vocabulary, language structures, and text features to focus on and design scaffolding accordingly.

• Vocabulary includes ‘tier two vocabulary’, or words that occur in teaching and learning, such as ‘discuss’, ‘arrange’, and ‘essay’, and words that have a different meaning in learning to the meaning in everyday life, for example ‘table’ in maths. ‘Tier three vocabulary’ is specific to each subject, for example ‘onomatopoeia’ in English, ‘photosynthesis’ in biology, and ‘gouache’ in art.

Teachers can create word mats, with pictures, and bilingual glossaries with words in English and the learner’s preferred language. This Great Idea has examples of additional vocabulary building strategies. Planning for the lesson should include opportunities for learners to recycle the new vocabulary by hearing it, reading it, and then using it as they speak and write.

• Language structures determine how sentences are constructed. Teachers can highlight a key language structure in a lesson and provide sentence stems for talking and writing that provide support and practice for using the structure. Examples include nominalisation in history: ‘The disenfranchisement of the local population was sealed by an act of parliament.’; the passive voice in science: ‘Discolouration was observed’; and figurative language in English literature: ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’.
• Text features include the ways in which texts in English are structured and the type of language writers use in each genre, from ‘Once upon a time…’ in fairy tales, to headings, subheadings, tables, and graphs in science texts. Learners can talk about how a text works, compare it to texts they may know in their home language, and co-construct new texts with a partner or teacher.

Top tip: The language focus in a lesson should be limited, especially for learners at the early stages of acquiring English. Prepare a short list of key vocabulary and one or two language structures per lesson so that learners do not become overwhelmed.

When teachers plan language support, it is also important to consider what cultural references could provide a barrier to learners from different cultural contexts. This means providing explanations, examples, and illustrations to remove those barriers.

Why is integrating content and language a Great Idea for EAL learners?

Cummins (2000) describes academic proficiency as ‘the extent to which an individual has access to and command of the oral and written academic registers of schooling.’ To ensure the access to and command of academic registers, integrating a focus on language in the context of curriculum learning, and planning the support needed to understand and use that language, is a great idea for multilingual classrooms.

Learning the curriculum in mainstream classrooms provides an authentic context within which multilingual learners who are acquiring English can develop their knowledge and use of English. Bifield (2025) explains the value of setting language goals for lessons as part of curriculum planning, especially for those learners at the earlier stages of acquiring English as it ‘can significantly enhance their access to the curriculum.’

Gibbons (2009) emphasises the importance of talk in creating ‘bridges to academic reading and writing’. She shows how teachers can create dialogue with multilingual learners, carefully introducing and framing the language they need to talk and write about a curriculum topic. Derewianka and Jones (2016) draw on Gibbons’ work in multilingual classrooms, and draw on ‘extensive research into language use in different social contexts to describe the nature of language and its central role in learning.’

Teachers can plan time and space in their lessons for learners to engage in conversations about the language they encounter and reflect on the ways discourses work in a particular subject. In a translanguaging pedagogy (Garcia 2013), learners can compare how language works in the languages they know, and may have been taught in previously, to language use in the texts they encounter in English. This metalinguistic awareness is an asset that teachers can harness to build academic proficiency in English.

References

Bifield, J. (2025) What does a language-friendly lesson look like? In EAL Journal, Issue 27. NALDIC.

Conteh, J. (2019) The EAL Teaching Book: Promoting Success for Multilingual Learners. London. Sage Publications.

Cummins, J. (2000) Language, Power and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the Crossfire. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Derewianka, B, and Jones, P. (2016) Teaching Language in Context. Australia. Oxford University Press.

Garcia, 0. (2013) Theorizing Translanguaging for Educators. In C. Celic, K. Seltzer, & L. Ascenzi-Moreno (Eds.), Translanguaging: A CUNY-NYSIEB guide for educators (2^nd. Ed.): 1-6. The Graduate Centre at The City University of New York.

Gibbons, P. (2009) English Learners, Academic Literacy and Thinking. Portsmouth. Heinemann.

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