Concept-based Instruction: A Sociocultural Approach to Connecting Language and Disciplinary Meaning

Given these connections between legal argumentation and legal language, explicit instruction that can tie together legal concepts and skills has the potential to enhance students' development as legal readers and writers in a second language and legal system. Sociocultural theory (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006) provides a robust model for this in the form of concept-based instruction (CBI). This model is divided into two main strands, one referred to as systemic theoretical instruction and the other as developmental instruction (Lantolf & Poehner, 2014: xiii), or movement-from-the-abstract-to-the-concrete (van Compernolle, 2014: 19). Systemic theoretical instruction focuses on the internalization of a comprehensive conceptual model provided by the instructor. The procedure through which this is accomplished involves a series of instructional stages: motivation, orientation, materialization, overt speech, covert speech and full internalization (Negueruela, 2003). Developmental instruction, however, emphasizes the guided construction and application of conceptual models by students. Learners are initially presented with a flexible 'germ-cell' model of the focal concept, which is intended to 'encompass the essence of the discipline' (Ferreira, 2005: 60). Students then work with the instructor to refine this model as they apply it to a concrete problem situation.

Although systemic theoretical instruction has been more widely applied in sociocultural theory, van Compernolle (2014) draws on aspects of both approaches in CBI focused on sociopragmatic awareness and indexicality in L2 French. This combined approach is grounded in three broad principles of CBI outlined in Lantolf and Thorne (2006). The first of these principles is that the basic unit of instruction should be concepts, or 'systematic representations of objects of study that guide learners' actions during concrete material activity' (van Compernolle, 2014: 21).