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.