THE CHALLENGES AND RESERVATIONS OF PLANNING CONTENT-BASED INSTRUCTION IN IRANIAN EFL SETTING

Admittedly, no research has to date been conducted into the content-based language teaching (Herewith, CBLT) concerning learning both language and subject matter in Iranian EFL settings associated with Bilingual Education System (afterwards, BES), aiming at teenagers. The study hence addressed these general issues: An Investigation into the EFL learners’ (n=35) performance on grammar, vocabulary and subject matter related to sciences in CBLT. To these objectives, upon taking account of instrumentation, i.e., pre-test, materials for treatment, and a proficiency test as well as the reliability of the tests and field testing, post-tests pursued by a two-month treatment for 16 sessions associated with grammatical and lexical competence and content knowledge of the learners were administered. Statistically viewed, a Paired Samples t-test run on the learner’s pre-test/ post-test grammar performance was indicative of a statistically non-significant difference ( t = -1.42, P = 0.19). Likewise, the results of t-test run on the learner’s pre-test/ post-test vocabulary performance displayed no statistically significant difference ( t = -1.48, P = 0.14 ). On the contrary, with regard to the third research question, another Paired Samples t-test was conducted to find out their performance on sciences and the result reached a statistical significance ( t = -1.32, p = < 0.000). Given the statistical evidence, generally viewed, teaching sciences to general-English non-proficient learners led to a high performance on content, but to a low grammar and vocabulary improvement. On the basis of the implications of the study, some notes are made: since BES is a country-wide program in some schools and also with a view to the absolute paucity of research in this field, the study inspires and demands further investigation into the ins and outs of BES.  As well as this, because the project targets at teenagers with poor general English proficiency, some extra-curriculum courses in conjunction with developing general English must be accounted for. On top of this, in a word, the far-fetched consequences of BES on the teenage learners and the required measures and reservations are further argued as relevant implications.