Eating for English: A Comparative Environment Analysis of a Gastronomy Language Course Taught in an ESL and EFL Context

The English as a foreign language (EFL) and English as a second language (ESL) learning contexts have been shown to be a moderating variable affecting language learning performance (Plonsky, 2011). While the EFL setting can be challenging to unearth communicative contexts for meaningful language use, teaching a course in an ESL context does not ensure a communicative classroom environment. Instead, it may be the use of theme-based language instruction (Brinton, 2003) and dynamic units (Shin, 2007) that are more influential in ensuring that language is being used meaningfully by students.

Inspired by such notions, and to compare the possible influences of the learning contexts, an eclectic teaching method incorporating elements of communicative, skill-based, theme-based, and content-based language learning was used to teach an innovative gastronomy language learning course to ESL (n=5) students in the United States and EFL students (n=12) in Taiwan. The qualitative environment data analysis (Tessmer, 1990; Richards, 2001) centered on the teacher's reflection reports, transcripts of videoed classroom interactions, and students' responses to an open- and closed-ended questionnaire, revealing similarities and differences between how the course was run in the two contexts because of environment constraints placed on the learners, the teacher, and the situation (e.g., time, cultural background, learners' L1 background).  Initial data analysis does not support that the ESL or EFL environment was a crucial factor influencing the success of the course and instead the realities of the institutional contexts and practices within the classroom including the use of highly motivating tasks led to successful courses.