The language is always believed to play a central role in learning. No matter what the subject area, students assimilate new concepts when they listen, talk, read and write about what they are learning. Speaking and writing reflects the thinking process that is taking place. Students learn in language, therefore if their language is weak, so is their learning.
Most importantly, we need to have an Learning Across Curriculum (LAC) approach because by focusing on the teaching and learning of language within a subject, the teacher will improve the students’ results in that subject. Experienced teachers know that it is essential to teach their students how to ‘answer’ the types of questions they are likely to find in their exams. After understanding and working with the LAC concept, teachers across disciplines will thus be improving students learning within their own subject while also supporting the efforts of the whole school to improve English proficiency.
In the context of teaching foreign and second languages we are used to consider language as a medium for everyday and often fairly trivial communicative activities. We are also well aware of its function for retrieving information from all sorts of verbal sources. However, in the context of teaching and learning content in subject areas such as Mathematics, Social Sciences, Physics and even Art and Music there are more reasons why language matters: