Academic Language/Literacy Strategies for Adolescents

A "How-To" Manual for Educators

Debra L. Cook Hirai, Irene Borrego, Emilio Garza, Carl Kloock, Carl T. Kloock

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135164096
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Fast-paced, practical, and innovative, this text for pre-service and in-service teachers features clear, easily accessible lessons and professional development activities to improve the delivery of academic language/literacy education across the content areas in junior/middle school and high school classrooms. Numerous hands-on tools and techniques demonstrate the effectiveness of content-area instruction for students in a wide variety of school settings, particularly English language learners, struggling readers, and other special populations of students.

Based on a strong professional development model the authors have been instrumental in designing, Academic Language/Literacy Strategies for Adolescents addresses:

• motivation
• attributes of academic language
• vocabulary: theory and practice
• reading skills development
• grammar and writing.

A wealth of charts, graphs, and lesson plans give clear examples of academic language/literacy strategies in action. The appendices – a key component of the practical applications developed in the text – include a glossary, exemplary lessons that address key content areas, and a Grammar Handbook.

In this era of increased accountability, coupled with rapid demographic change and challenges to traditional curricula and pedagogical methods, educators will find this book to be a great resource.

Chapter 1

Background

As we move forward in the age of curricular accountability in public schools, teachers find themselves “caught” between the demands for accountability from the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) and the needs of their students. Data and standards based curriculum have become the norm as teachers are held more responsible for student achievement results on standardized testing. Academic language instruction is a tool which offers a solution for increasing student achievement in core subject areas. Students who are taught strategies to comprehend and effectively use academic language in core subject areas will score higher on achievement tests and will function better in school and college. All teachers, regardless of content area or the grade level they are teaching, should be aware of the research-based instructional strategies that will assist all students to more effectively comprehend content information.

In this chapter we will introduce the concept of academic language by including some history of the development of the major concepts included within the umbrella term academic language and provide the operational definition we will use throughout this book. We introduce the general instructional philosophy associated with a focus on academic language, but leave specific strategies for the individual chapters, especially chapters 4 to 6. We will also address the topic of why we feel teachers should use academic language strategies and introduce some of the current teaching context: both where our students are and teacher preparation for teaching language in the content areas. Finally, we offer a brief preview of the remaining chapters in the book.

A Short History of the Term Academic Language

We address the issue of the history of academic language so that the reader can understand not only the context of the term but also how it has evolved into a topic of major concern for educators today. Many educators consider the term academic language to mean the vocabulary of their discipline, when in reality it encompasses social and academic discourse, interpretation of content-area reading, and types of writing discourse. A brief history of the use of the term academic language will help to clarify this point. We will also introduce some of the terminology that we use throughout the text.

Hymes (1972) was one of the first researchers to introduce the concept of academic language, although he did not coin the term as such. He addressed “communicative competence” and the use of language functions in both formal and informal contexts within the classroom. Hymes (1972), who came from the field of linguistics, was one of the first to address the features, patterns, and appropriate use of language within the context of classroom content. Halliday (1975) followed up with the introduction of functional grammar. He described how a student could control the functions of language while performing numerous tasks within the classroom. This includes using language to express needs, gain knowledge, convey knowledge, command others, express feelings, and form relationships. This is not simply a question of using the students’ “own words” or social discourse to communicate academic knowledge, but involves asking students to modify the language to accurately reflect what the content means. Halliday (1985b) further clarified the different language functions as a petition or request to satisfy needs (I want); control behavior (do as I say); for social interaction (getting along with others); as an expression of pride (here I come); to seek knowledge (why); to be imaginative (let’s pretend); to communicate information (I’ve got something to tell you); and for diversion (jokes, riddles).

Canale (1983) further categorized communicative competence into four areas: grammatical; sociolinguistic (using specialized language use for different social contexts); discourse competence (conversation competence); and strategic competence (using language to communicate effectively—both verbal and nonverbal nuances). Stephen Krashen (1982) introduced the “input hypothesis,” which discussed the use of students’ prior knowledge to enable them to understand language in the classroom. This involved the teacher’s use of gestures, context, pictures, and grammatical structures through “comprehensible input” to assist struggling students to understand the content knowledge.

The first researcher to label academic language as such was Jim Cummins (1980), who identified two different types of language proficiencies that English learners must acquire in order to acquire English. The first is basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS; which involves speaking and listening skills), and the second is cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP; which is related to reading and writing skills). Basic interpersonal communication skills are used for social conversational purposes and are much easier to master, whereas CALPs are used to convey academic learning and take much longer to acquire.

Definitions of Academic Language

Academic language is synonymous with academic English. The National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning defines academic English as language which includes

semantic and syntactic features such as vocabulary items, sentence structure, transitions markers and cohesive ties, and language functions and tasks that are part of the social studies classroom routine, such as defining terms, explaining historical significance, reading expository text, and preparing research reports. (Short, 1993, p.1)

Academic language is sometimes defined as a multidimensional focus on the meaning and task (Cummins, 2000b; Krashen, 1982; MacSwan & Rolstad, 2003; Wong Fillmore, 2004). It is essential to understand how language is used in different areas in order to construe particular kinds of meaning as required by the content areas. Academic language is central to teaching any discipline content (see Figure 1.1).

As we focus on struggling readers, including English learners, academic language or academic proficiency (Krashen & Brown, 2007) can also be defined as cognitive academic language skills (CALPS) as opposed to basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS).

As with all innovations, the BICS/CALPS distinction has been discussed in detail by many scholars. One of the more interesting comments is MacSwan and Rolstad’s (2003) observation that non-academic language can be quite complicated and can take a long time to acquire. BICS, they suggest, is different, not less complex. Such criticisms are valuable in that they lead to deeper understandings of BICS and CALP, but they do not challenge the basic distinction.” (Krashen, personal communication, July 8, 2008)

Mary Schleppegrell (2004) refers to academic language as the “language of schooling.” She considers it to involve the development of linguistic capacity which draws on meaning, thus using the resources of academic registers that enable students to demonstrate their knowledge through discourse.

Figure 1.1 A graphic representation of academic language.

Anna Chamot and J. Michael O’Malley (1994) define academic language as: “the language that is used by teachers and students for the purpose of acquiring new knowledge and skills” (p. 40). They explain that it differs from social language and increases in difficulty as students progress through the grades. Chamot and O’Malley also point out that two factors affect comprehension: context (here and now—concrete information) and cognitive complexity (the abstract language of schooling that is decontextualized or without any concrete references for the learner).

According to Robin Scarcella (2003), academic language is: “a variety or a register of English used in professional books and characterized by the specific linguistics features associated with academic disciplines” (p. 19). She further explains that the “register” refers to many different forms of language used specifically for different contexts both in and outside of the classroom. This phenomenon occurs in all disciplines and includes a wide range of genres including biographies, lab reports, and journals, and involves listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. Scarcella identifies five components of academic language: phonological (sounds, stress, patterns); lexical (word meanings including root words and affixes); grammatical (knowledge of syntax, grammatical forms, punctuation, and rules); sociolinguistic (appropriate production of sentences to match in school and out of school situations); and discourse (conversational language, both formal and informal).

Bailey, Butler, LaFramenta, and Ong (2001–2004) note that the term academic language is interpreted differently among researchers (see Cummins, 2000b, for a review). It also has a variety of meanings to teachers and among educators in general (Solomon & Rhodes, 1995). The definition of academic language used in this study is consistent with definitions used in previous National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) work (Bailey, 2000; Stevens, Butler, & Castellon-Wellington, 2000) that sought to characterize academic language at the lexical (vocabulary), syntactic (forms of grammar), and discourse (rhetorical) levels. This study also emphasizes that academic language is characterized by how it creates meaning within the context of the content area. They state that it is important to address the intersection of language and content—without both basic language proficiency and content knowledge students will have difficulty understanding the academic language used on standardized tests. In this book, the authors seek to clarify the appropriate register of discourse used in the classroom as well as accurate usage and understanding of vocabulary, including the recognition of correct grammatical forms and functions (see Table 1.1).

Instruction from an Academic Language Perspective

What does academic language mean to our teachers? When we use academic language in math, science, and social studies, it means teaching the language as well as the content of the discipline. It involves teaching students the vocabulary, writing styles, and sophisticated grammatical forms associated with the content area. It includes a distinct differentiation between the social discourse used outside of school and the more formal academic discourse used in the classroom. It explicitly acknowledges the difference between reading and writing for pleasure and reading and writing to inform and convey information. Academic language emphasizes critical thinking and inquiry, and is for the most part information dense. The term information dense is used to identify written passages that contain complex sentences and higher level vocabulary. Instruction using academic language emphasizes the use of concrete language (i.e., context embedded) instruction because students are often exposed to abstract and context-reduced instruction without the literacy support they require at the upper grade levels. For example, picture a person walking down the sidewalk who asks you the question, “How many?” Now picture that sidewalk located just outside a restaurant you selected to eat dinner. This exemplifies a context reduced versus context embedded situation: in the first setting the question is out of context, while in the second, there are clues from the context available to help figure out what is being referred to. A telephone conversation is the most context reduced form of oral language and the most difficult language task for a second language learner. Without the use of any comprehensible input, other schemata, or background knowledge to assist the learner, simple comprehension can be very difficult in this type of situation. For many of our students, reading in the content areas or listening to teachers’ lectures can be compared to conducting a telephone conversation in a second language....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Brief Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. Background
• Chapter 2. Motivation
• Chapter 3. Attributes of Academic Language
• Chapter 4. Vocabulary: Theory and Practice
• Chapter 5. Reading Skills Development
• Chapter 6. Grammar and Writing
• Chapter 7. Summing Up
• Glossary
• Appendix 1: Expressive and Receptive Language Strategies and Model Lesson Plan Format
• Appendix 2: Sample Lesson Plans Including Expressive and Receptive Language Prompts
• Appendix 3: Sample Lesson Plans without Expressive and Receptive Language Prompts
• Appendix 4: Sample Writing Rubric
• Appendix 5: List of Useful Web Sites for Math and Science
• Appendix 6: Common Cognates
• Appendix 7: Grammar Handbook
• References
• Index