Creating context in a language lesson not only makes the learning interesting and/or motivates the learners, it can also activate the area of the brain that relates to learners’ experiences. Neuroscience has confirmed that “the incorporation of context in teaching facilitates the efficient functioning of the brain by acknowledging the spheres of our realities” (p. Creating context can provide stimuli and helps to hook the new learning content with the learned or known. Its relationship with content is crucial as it gives meaning to content. It provides important reference points for meaning making in language learning. The significance of context in language learning and teaching has had many proponents over time.
This research provides an evidence-based understanding of contextualization in CFL teaching for a more sustainable second language education.Įtymologically, the concept of context can be sourced to its Latin origin as texere/textere, referring to a weaving process or ‘to weave’. The data reveal that the teacher-researchers employed various forms of contextualization in teaching and linked these to particular teaching content through identifiable, purposeful activities, resulting in a variety of students’ responses. This research is grounded in a social constructionism perspective whereby context is regarded as a dynamic relation-building process, or more accurately, a contextualizing process, enabled through various sociocultural activities. It aims to extend the prevalent emphasis in the current literature that acknowledges the role of context in language education however, these research studies primarily give voice to linguistic contexts or relegates context into a static physical space such as ‘environment’. This research focuses on the practice of contextualization in teaching Chinese as a foreign language among a cohort of bilingual language teacher-researchers.
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