ABSTRACT
Being successful in an English-speaking academic environment requires that ESL students be both functionally and academically literate, that they be able to use English to access, understand, articulate, and critically analyze conceptual relationships within, between, and among a wide variety of content areas. It is the basic premise of this volume of essays that contentbased instruction (CBI) enables college English as a Second Language (ESL) students to develop and refine these necessary literacy skills. Through planned, purposeful, and academically based activities that target linguistic and critical thinking skills and engage students in meaningful and authentic language processing, CBI fosters a functional language learning environment that goes beyond simply presenting information in the second language. This functional language-learning environment offers ample opportunities for students to use English to gather, synthesize, and evaluate information (Pally, 1997) as it teaches them appropriate patterns of academic discourse and sociolinguistic conventions relating to audience and purpose (Soter, 1990).
