Population Pyramids enhance the integration of language and content in speaking and writing

Demography is an interdisciplinary field, which is central to different degree programs such as finance, government, International Relations and Economics to mention a few. When population pyramids and diagrams are used in the EFL course, they are meaningful because they conjure content material from the student’s area of study. Furthermore, a range of language related to addressing present, past and future are used by students as they look at population pyramids.

This is part of an ongoing class project, which students have found interesting and useful as they have been able to put their academic skills to practice. Furthermore, students realize the importance of transcending the disciplines in order to provide a complete explanation for the demographic trends and transformations.

Population Pyramids present the size of a female and male population of a given area by age groups or cohorts by 5 year intervals as can be seen in this pyramid of the world’s population profile for 2017

(source: https://www.populationpyramid.net/: copy permission granted by site manager)

The website, https://www.populationpyramid.net/ presents population pyramids at a global, regional, continental and national level. The user can look at pyramids for a place from the past, predictions for the future.  Dr. Martin De Wulf, the owner of the site, happily guaranteed the right to copy graphs for academic purposes. This would enable students to use them for slides or poster sessions to discuss and analyze population changes.

Talking about the past

As students compare the size of a certain age group to another, they can develop language related to speculation such as models. Irregular patterns in pyramids, such as certain disproportionally large or small cohort triggers an interest the factors contributing to this phenomena. It here that knowledge from mainstream courses such as history, current affairs, sociology and others comes to use in student discussions. For example, this pyramid of Oman brought up the issue of migrant workers as there cohort for males aged 30-34 does not conform to that of most countries. Students who have been studying migration suspect the presence of a large migrant labor force given the age. Moreover, questions about the factors that pull them there and their place of origin arise, Comparatives and superlatives come in useful as students look at the cohort in light of its female counterpart.

 

Discussions about the future of a country in terms of its working population and pension system are also triggered. Again, in terms of language, it’s yet another opportunity for practicing modals. Also, future conditionals can be practiced as students who have taken actuarial science courses predict what would happen to the pension system as in the case of Denmark.

Conclusions

Students simultaneously practice language and content skills. Content  knowledge is constantly constructed as students reach into the different disciplines to explain the nature of a cohort in its present, past and future forms. Students always ask to look at different countries and also learn about countries they would never probably never have studied. From a language perspective, they subconsciously drill grammar forms as they speculate and compare cohorts and countries.  Not much research has been conducted on the dual learning that occurs through population pyramids in the classroom, making them an interesting tool for areas such as PBL and CLIL.