Academic Language

What is Academic Language?

Academic language is the language needed by students to understand and communicate in the academic disciplines. It can be understood as the language necessary in order to engage with the content, successfully complete the learning task and activities of the lesson, and to demonstrate their learning (Chang, Lozano, Neri, & Herman, 2017). Academic language includes such things as specialized vocabulary, conventional text structures within a content area or discipline (e.g., essays, lab reports) and other language related to activities typical of classrooms, (e.g., expressing disagreement, discussing an issue, asking for clarification). Academic language includes both productive (speaking, writing) and receptive (listengin, reading) modalities. It also includes interaction. One of your goals for any given learning segment should be to further develop your students’ academic language abilities. This means that your learning objectives should focus on language as well as on content. You can and should communicate content through means other than language, e.g., physical models, visuals, demonstrations. However, you should also develop your students’ abilities to produce and understand oral and written texts typical in your subject area as well as to engage in language-based tasks.

What are the language demands of a learning task?

One common misconception is that language demands are the complex and difficult language in the lesson, or only the most complicated content-area vocabulary and grammar structures. In reality, language demands of a learning task include any of the receptive language skills (e.g., listening, reading) or the productive language skills (e.g., speaking, writing) needed by the student in order to engage in and complete the task successfully. Language demands are so embedded in instructional activities that you may take many for granted. When identifying the language demands of your planned lessons and assessments, consider everything that the students have to do to engage in the communication related to the activity: listen to directions, read a piece of text, answer a question out loud, prepare a presentation, write a summary, respond to written questions, research a topic, talk within a small group of peers. All of these common activities create a demand for language reception, language production, using language in interaction. The questions you can ask yourself in order to identify the language demands are, what language do students need in order to accomplish classroom activities and tasks, and how do I want students to accomplish these tasks?

Language demands can generally be broken down into two categories: language functions and language features (Chang, Lozano, Neri, & Herman, 2017). Language functions refer to how students use language in the lesson, make meaning, build understanding, or engage in reasoning. These may include justifying, inferring, comparing and contrasting, asking for clarification, problem solving, etc. These functions generally cut across content areas, and identify the language students need in order to perform in an academic setting. 

Language features refers to the specific words and phrases (general and discipline specific vocabulary, words with multiple meanings, etc), sentence types (complex and compound sentences, modal verbs, nominalizations, etc), and discourse structures (coherence, connectors, text features, narrative structures, etc) which students will use over the course of a lesson.

Some language demands are related to text types, which have specific conventions with respect to format, expected content, tone, common grammatical structures (e.g., if…, then…), etc. The language demands of other tasks are not as predictable, and may vary depending on the situation, e.g., participating in a discussion or asking a question. All students, not only English Learners, have productive and receptive language development needs. The discussion of language development should address your whole class, including English Learners, speakers of varieties of English, and other native English speakers.

Vocabulary

As content and classroom teachers, we often think of vocabulary as the bolded words or words listed in a glossary. These are, however, only one type of vocabulary terms: Tier 3 or content-specific vocabulary. Tier 3 words are context-bound, acquired during learning academic content, and require direct instruction for all students, preferably embedded in and/or using examples from the discipline. Examples include terms such as estuary, alliteration, integer, igneous, colony, habitat, photosynthesis, etc.

While schools often focus primarily on Tier 3 vocabulary, there are in fact three tiers. Tier 2 vocabulary terms provide crucial and high leverage learning and application for all students, across grades, disciplines, and language abilities. Tier 2 vocabulary words are those terms which may be applied across content areas, and often map onto language functions as mentioned above. For example, terms such as cause, effect, prediction, vary, etc. They may also be words with multiple meanings, for example the table you sit at versus the table where data is presented. 

Tier 2 vocabulary words are:

• High-utility academic vocabulary used across disciplines/content areas;

• Often found in written texts: informational, literary, and technical;

• Often have multiple meanings or specific nuances (i.e. chortle vs giggle);

• Include words that are necessary in order to engage with the content;

• Usually abstract; and

• Include process(ing) words, connectors, and transition words i.e. cause, justify, defend, details, compare.

Tier 1 vocabulary terms are those often picked up in social settings. These are terms that, for multilingual students, ESOL teachers often focus on. They are commonly used in social contexts and everyday talking, typically have one meaning, and are usually concrete. It is often assumed students will pick up these words during social conversations, but they should be reviewed by ESOL teachers. Examples include dog, cat, sat, girl, boy, blue, green, talk, sing, run, etc.

While many teachers include vocabulary instruction around Tier 3 vocabulary, it is an important part of academic language development to ensure students are exposed to, understand, and have multiple opportunities to engage with and practice Tier 2 vocabulary as well. 

The Role of Oral Language Development and Discourse

Learning is a social process mediated by language. Students can both acquire and demonstrate their learning through extended oral discourse. As such, one of the most powerful tools educators have is providing students with structured opportunities to verbally interact with each other around content, concepts, and ideas. Student to student interaction allows students to process new information, construct meaning, connect to previous knowledge, construct an explanation, and prepare for complex written tasks, and to do so together. Moreover, effective oral language skills are a precursor to and integral part of literacy skills, not only phonemic awareness and decoding, but also vocabulary acquisition, comprehension, and writing (All-Party Parliamentary Group, 2021). 

As such, teachers should provide ample time for structured collaborative tasks, oral and written, in which students are exchanging information and ideas, justifying their reasoning, clarifying their ideas and opinions, asking questions of each other, building on each others’ ideas, and identifying and solving problems. This requires substantial planning on the part of the teacher in order to make the task meaningful, i.e. related to the content learning target. Teachers should also strive to provide equitable collaborative/talk structures, appropriate linguistic supports and other scaffolds, and explicit instruction in general and domain-specific vocabulary. 

Engaging students in collaborative tasks and structured interaction has the added benefit of increasing metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness as students work with each other to understand and be understood, to explore the content, and to test out new language terms, functions, and features. It also honors those cultures which are deeply rooted in oral traditions, and can dismantle barriers to educational equity, as students are provided the tools and knowledge to learn to talk and learn through talk.

Who needs academic language development?

While students whose first language is not English are often the primary target of academic language development, the truth is that all students benefit from explicit academic language instruction. Academic language stands in stark contrast to language students hear and engage in in other contexts, such as on the playground, at home, going to the store, etc. Moreover, because academic language is generally more abstract and has more complex sentence structure, it can be hard for students to understand and even harder to use. An integrated focus on academic language instruction - meaning it is embedded in instruction, practice, and task, and in collaborative processes rather than individualized and isolated from content (Chang, Lozano, Neri, & Herman, 2017) - is a crucial but often forgotten dimension of student success throughout their schooling. Research shows that it is ineffective - and inauthentic - to teach language features and functions in isolation and apart from content. In the course of a lesson, there may be times when teachers will need to highlight specific features or functions (e.g., teach a mini-lesson on pronouns and referents or how to give an explanation). However, teachers and students should go back to the text or activity to ensure that the learning of a specific language feature or function helps students comprehend the content

What does developing academic language mean?

Just as students come to school or a particular classroom with some prior knowledge and background in the content of the subject matter, they also come with some skills in communicating effectively in the academic environment or that content area. 

Students hold already-established language practices, whether of a language other than English, various forms or dialects of English, language they have learned previously in other contexts, or ways in which they use language in other settings such as at home or in their communities. These practices and language uses should be viewed with an assets-based lens, that is, the teacher should consider how to build on and add to what students already know, rather than seeking to replace it. This also means allowing students to use their entire language repertoire in the classroom in order to make meaning and communicate.

Just as part of the teacher’s responsibility is to help the students further develop their understandings and skills in the content of the subject matter, they also have to help students develop their skills in using and understanding the oral discourse, the text types, the written discourse, and the subject-specific vocabulary that are typical in the particular content area. Teachers may use a variety of methods and strategies to both explicitly teach students the conventions of academic language in a content area and to help them incorporate them in their everyday classroom usage of language. For example, a social studies teacher may highly scaffold the process of constructing an argument based on historical evidence, how to communicate a thesis in an essay, or how to debate a political point of view. Or an elementary mathematics teacher might help students understand the conventions and features expected for showing their problem-solving work, how to explain alternative solutions to a problem, or how to interpret mathematical symbols.

For writing tasks, it is important to make the features explicit, often providing graphic organizers when students are first learning how to produce the structure necessitated by the task and discipline (i.e. what discourse structure to use). For less predictable language tasks, students need to understand the nature of the task and the range of possible responses and associated language. When students are just learning to use a particular form of academic language, they will need more scaffolding and support. For example, an English teacher trying to develop students’ abilities to follow up on a student comment might invite students to brainstorm different types of responses (e.g., agreement with elaboration, agreement with qualification, disagreement) together with some typical sentence starters or grammatical structures for each type of response.

Academic Language Teaching Strategies

As teachers choose which strategy to use, it should be noted that language and content should be integrated so that students are building content knowledge, disciplinary skills, and academic language embedded in meaning and context, while developing proficiency across all four language domains: reading, writing, speaking, and listening (SDCOE, 2021). And, while these strategies are crucial for multilingual learners, they should be considered as universal access strategies and scaffolds which will benefit all students across disciplines, content areas, and grade levels.  

As students explore the use of academic language via the strategies below, teachers should consider how to allow for and support translanguaging (using an individual's entire language repertoire to make meaning, that is, allowing the use of languages other than (academic) English In the classroom) and cross-linguistic analysis (exploring the differences and similarities in the phonetics (sounds), morphology (word parts), semantics (word use and meaning), syntax (grammar), and semantics (language use in context) across languages). 

Core strategies for developing academic language typically fall into one of seven categories: using complex texts, fortifying complex output, fostering academic interaction, clarifying complex language, modeling, guiding, and designing instruction (Zwiers, O'Hara & Pritchard, 2014). We believe additional categories include tuning in to students’ and their families social, emotional, and physical needs, and access to equity-centered deeper learning opportunities. 

1. Tune in to students’ and their families’ social, emotional, and physical needs by considering:

   1. Student motivation

   2. Student voice

   3. Building relationships with students

   4. Establishing partnerships with families to support students’ learning

   5. Access to housing, accessing transportation, food security, safety, etc

2. Provide Equity Centered Deeper Learning opportunities for all students. 

3. Clarify Complex Language (input) using: 

   1. Visuals (pictures, diagram, charts, videos, realia [real objects or models], dramatization) 

   2. Hands-on activities

   3. Repeated exposure

   4. Appropriate wait time, pace of speech and other verbal scaffolding

   5. Intonation and stress in speech

   6. Concise and chunked directions

   7. Specific feedback (on both content and language) 

4. Design Instruction which: 

   1. Is multimodal - verbal visual, kinesthetic 

   2. Assess and builds background knowledge 

   3. Includes group work

   4. Considers all language domains

5. Guide and Fortify Complex Output:

   1. Graphic Organizers (pre, during, and post reading or listening, as an organizer for writing)

   2. Sentence Stems - talk moves, Zwiers constructive conversation skills

   3. Word banks for writing and speaking activities

6. Modeling is demonstrating for students how to approach complex language (as opposed to just using complex language): Effective modeling involves much more than reading aloud, thinking aloud, word walls, or using new words correctly in sentences. Because so much complex language is happening and needs to happen in a lesson, strategic, planned, and intentional modeling is a must. For example, the teacher may demonstrate how to overcome language obstacles, engage students in discussions about language, or demonstrate the meta-cognitive aspects of working with language by asking "why" questions about why specific language might be important.

7. Explicit Vocabulary Instruction, especially around Tier 2 words (along with Tier 3 words) (see discussion above).

   1. Introducing the terms: 

• Interactive word walls 

• Frayer model (note that while this link is specifically for grades 6-12, this strategy can be adapted for younger student as well)

The Frayer Model is a graphic organizer for building student vocabulary. This technique requires students to define target vocabulary and apply their knowledge by generating examples and non-examples, giving characteristics, and/or drawing a picture to illustrate the meaning of the word.

• Creating an interactive, hands-on activity/shared experiences which becomes the bases for discussion using the words

Note: Creating a shared experience helps to a) build background on a topic, and/or b) provide something concrete to which students can attach language.

• Using an image or video to introduce words (visual literacy)

2. Modeling word solving: the teacher selects a piece of text that includes complex vocabulary terms, which they then then read aloud, pausing to demonstrate word solving, including:

• •  Using context clues

  •  Explicitly teaching and examining morphology and etymology 

Note: This is especially helpful for upper elementary and secondary students.

• Using dictionaries and other resources to access definitions 

3. Using words in discussion:

• • • •  Interactive read-alouds and shared reading

      •  Collaborative text-based discussions

      •  Games using words

      •  Opinion stations (kids choose a place to stand based on a thought-provoking and language-rich prompt)

The key to effective vocabulary instruction is multiple exposures and multiple opportunities for students to use the terms in meaningful contexts.

8. Use complex texts and provide access by 

   1.  Establishing a purpose for reading (and multiple readings with a different purpose each time, where applicable)

   2.  Chunking the text into meaningful and manageable pieces 

   3.  Using text engineering

   4.  Providing graphic organizers pre-, during, and post-reading

   5.  Previewing vocabulary

   6.  Allowing meaningful student-to-student discussion about the text, with requisite language stems

   7.  Engaging students in a close reading protocol

   8.  Asking questions at various levels of depth of understanding, using the tiered questioning strategy

9. Fostering Academic Interaction and building structured opportunities for oral language development.  

While many of these strategies can be used across grade levels, the academic language demands for secondary students are more complex and abstract. Note that some of the strategies below are also applicable for students in upper elementary depending on the students’ academic language levels, instructional purpose, and activity. 

Instructional activities and resources that develop adolescents' content knowledge and academic language, i.e., their academic literacy, include teacher actions such as (Bongolan, Moir & Baron, 2010):

• Vocabulary and Language Development:

  • Introduces topic by teaching essential vocabulary before students engage in text or task; clarifies unfamiliar phrases, idioms, cultural references, keywords with multiple meanings; uses a variety of ways to teach word meanings, e.g. compares academic words to student-friendly synonyms or cognates, uses "concept webs" to show relationships among concepts; analyzes prefix, root word, suffix, and/or clarifies word use in context

  • Provides instruction for pivotal high-utility academic terms, sentence structures or writing applications linked to key text excerpts; differentiates language instruction per pre-assessed1 stages of students' ELD, reading levels, and/or depth of students' prerequisite background knowledge

• Explicit Instruction:

  • Intentionally identifies subject-specific academic language skills, and rationale for using certain meta-cognitive reading processes (e.g. identifying the purpose and meaning of a a specific passage, word problem, graph, timeline, lab procedure, anecdote, word analysis, different forms of "talking to text")

  • Clarifies steps for each meta-cognitive process, e.g. how to summarize, compare, solve for, classify, analyze, interpret, or evaluate specific to the subject, concept, and applications described in text

  • Previews key ideas, explains and models how to specifically "think like a (historian, mathematician, literary analyst, or scientist...)" when reading, e.g. how to interpret: structural features of text, including directions, graphics, appendices; interpreting pivotal phrases, references to prerequisite concepts, literary elements, past events

• Modeling, Visuals, and Graphic Organizers:

  • Provides models, nonlinguistic representations, or demonstrations of key concepts; visuals are comprehensible w/minimal explanation, and/or are labeled effectively; graphic organizers or student note-taking guides highlight essential concepts and relationships or hierarchies among main and supporting ideas

  • Provides students w/copies of featured text; if talking at length, simultaneously displays examples, outline, or concept map of ideas being presented on a Smart Board, PowerPoint slide, overhead transparency, or whiteboard

• Guided Instruction:

  • Articulates content and language outcomes for each lesson to increase students' attention to concepts and subject-specific speaking, listening, reading and writing proficiencies needed to learn the concepts

  • Structures whole group and *smaller flexible group interactions with pivotal text (*sometimes by student interest, learning preferences, literacy proficiencies); also provides culturally and linguistically responsive resources, or prompts that increase students' access to text concepts, academic discourse with peers, and probability of task completion

• Meaningful Contextualization:

  • Makes new concepts and related lexicon comprehensible by introducing or contextualizing them via demonstration, culturally and linguistically-relevant supplemental text, related anecdotes, metaphors, quotes, current events, prompts, examples, problems, life situations, visuals, references, realia, video, web sources

  • Elicits students' prior knowledge; connects new academic concepts to pre-assessed student interests, their sociocultural contexts, analogous life experiences as well as students' current level of background knowledge linked to new concepts; related tasks springboard student engagement and persistence in new learning

• Meta-cognitive Reading Processes:

  • Demonstrates appropriate meta-cognitive reading processes linked to the lesson, i.e. before, during, and after reading comprehension strategies; teaches strategies for predicting, summarizing, analyzing, evaluating, etc. through a variety of activities e.g. Questioning the Author, Question-Answer-Relationship, Reciprocal Teaching-Plus, Think-Aloud, Instructional Read-Aloud, K-W-L, SQR3, DRTA, Main Idea Mapping, Double Entry Journal, Cornell Note-taking

  • Facilitates tasks that apply these meta-cognitive strategies and activities so students may demonstrate and assess current understanding of concepts and literacy skills

Additional strategies for developing academic language for native speakers include (Finely, 2014):

1.  Encouraging students to read, think about, and discuss diverse texts. Including teaching students how to do close reads of text.

2.  Introduce summary frames

3.  Help students translate from academic to social language (and back)

4.  Have students complete scripts of academic routines (scaffolding academic discourse)

5.  Pre-teach OR dynamically introduce academic vocabulary

6.  Help students diagram similarities and differences

7.  Have students write with a transition handout

Sources

All-Party Parliamentary Group (2021). Speak for Change: Final report and recommendations from the All-Party Parliamentary Group Inquiry. https://oracy.inparliament.uk/files/oracy/2021-04/Oracy_APPG_FinalReport_28_04%20%284%29.pdf 

Bongolan, R., Moir, E., & Baron, W. (2010). Keys to the secondary classroom: A teacher's guide to the first months of school. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Chang, S. Lozano, M. Neri, R. & Herman, J. (2017). High-Leverage Principles of Effective Instruction for English Learners. National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing. University of California, Los Angeles.

https://csaa.wested.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/HighLeveragePrinciplesforELinstruction_Resource_0.pdf

Finley, T. (2014). 8 strategies for teaching academic language. Edutopia. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/8-strategies-teaching-academic-language-todd-finley

Jackson, J. & Narvaez, R. (2013). Interactive Word Walls: Create a tool to increase science vocabulary in five easy steps. Science and Children, 51(1), pp. 42-49. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43176074. 

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2015). Content area vocabulary learning. The Reading Teacher, 67(8).

 New Hampshire Teacher Common Assessment of Practice

San Diego County Office of Education, MEGA Department. (2021). The Importance of Communication and Oracy Development. https://www.sdcoe.net/educators/multilingual-education-and-global-achievement/oracy-toolkit/importance-of-oracy-development

Sibold, C. (2011). Building English Language Learners’ Academic Vocabulary. Multicultural Education, pp. 24-28. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ951842.pdf

Zwiers, J., O'Hara, S., & Pritchard, R. (2014). Common Core Standards in diverse classrooms: Essential practices for developing academic language and disciplinary literacy. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.