Chapter 1. Academic Language

Language can best be understood as action, rather than form or function alone (Walqui, 2012); students learn to do things with language when they participate in meaningful activities that engage and challenge them. Students will learn more English when engaged in the action of talking with other students than through typical teacher-directed activities designed solely to deliver content. Participation in oral activities has a dual purpose: it develops conceptual understanding and increases language use.

Fathman, Quinn, and Kessler (1992) point out that "language functions are specific uses of language for accomplishing certain purposes" (p. 12). In other words, the function of language is dependent on its purpose in a given lesson. For example, are students using it to describe? Explain? Persuade? Language structure, by contrast, refers to the words themselves and how they are strung together into phrases and sentences.

Language functions

Language functions exist in both oral and written communication. In real-life conversations, we may need to describe our weekend, explain how to get to a restaurant, or persuade a friend to help us with a project. Knowing how to use these language functions allows us to participate fully in these conversations. In school, we teach students to write for a variety of purposes. For example, we might ask a student to describe an animal in a report, explain how to plant a seed in a procedural manner, or persuade classmates to recycle.

A powerful reciprocal relationship links talking and writing. Talking allows students to develop ideas and language they can use while writing, and writing allows them to develop ideas and language they can express orally.

When teachers ask students to write for a variety of purposes and across different genres, students learn language functions. According to Gibbons (1991), a multitude of language functions for speaking occur in the classroom each day, including the following:

Language structures

The term language structure refers to what students say: the phrasing, key words, and grammatical usage that students acquiring English will need in order to participate in a lesson. Like language functions, language structures exist in both oral and written communication. Whereas language function is the "purpose" for talking, language structure refers to the "what"—the elements that culturally and linguistically diverse students will need to help them get the English out of their mouths.

To identify the language structure that accompanies language function, teachers should think in terms of the following elements:

• Sentence starters
• Key words or vocabulary
• Minilessons on using grammar to communicate meaning (keep in mind that grammar should be taught for practical use in authentic contexts—not as isolated rules)

Returning to the example of the real-life conversation mentioned earlier, when we describe our weekend, we might naturally say something such as "Over the weekend, I went to the zoo. I went to the park. I cleaned my kitchen. I also walked my dog." Consider the overall phrasing necessary to communicate this information. Appropriate sentence starters could include "Over the weekend, I went to ___" or "I ___ my___." Key words could include the names of places and things such as park, zoo, dog, and kitchen. A grammar minilesson could focus on the use of past-tense verbs or the idiomatic expression over the weekend. Let's take a look at some examples that illustrate the language functions, structures, and objectives that need to be addressed in a lesson.

Developing Oral Academic Language: Sound Like a Book

Conversational language differs from academic language. Conversational language is the informal, chatty way of talking that students use with family and friends, whereas academic language is language used at school and characterized by longer, more complex sentences that contain vocabulary less frequently heard than the vocabulary in everyday spoken English.

Each content area includes particular discourse, or ways of talking. For example, passive voice is common in science, because science is objective and we refer to scientific phenomena by focusing on the action. For example, "experiments were conducted by the scientists." Students in the process of learning English need teacher modeling of this type of language use and time to interact with others and use the passive voice when they "talk science."

Just as science is known for passive voice, history is known for chronological discourse, because it's written according to a time sequence. Certain transitional words, also known as signal words, accompany historical text and are used by authors to link ideas together. The language of time sequences includes words such as initially, followed by, immediately, afterward, meanwhile, and eventually. We want students to use these words when discussing history in the classroom. Mathematics, on the other hand, focuses on generalizations and principles, using academic language such as if … then, for instance, generally, it could be argued that, and therefore.

When we ask students to use the language of science, history, or math, we're asking them to "sound like a book." Students may initially need to have their learning scaffolded. Teachers can first ask students to verbalize something as if they were their parents or as if they were the principal. Next, students could be asked to sound like a scientist, historian, or mathematician. In analyzing how professionals speak, students should be led to recognize that such speech involves longer, more complex sentences and uses higher-level vocabulary than is common in everyday speech. The use of signal words contributes to creating longer compound sentences.

The Academic Language Framework

Given the growing numbers of English language learners and other students in need of language development in our classrooms, simply teaching content is no longer enough. Subject-matter teachers are being called upon to address the academic language that accompanies their content.

The Academic Language Framework (see Appendix A for a blank template) offers a structure for deciphering the language demands of content. Here's how to use the framework:

1. "Go to the balcony"—step back and get a sense of the big picture—and observe your students when they're engaged in productive accountable talk. They may be discussing what they have read or are going to write but aren't yet engaged in the actual task of reading or writing. For example, while addressing a 5th grade English Language Arts standard from the Common Core State Standards (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.R.L5.5), a teacher might ask his or her students to sequence events in one of the chapters from Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan. This task is recorded in the Task portion of the template (see Figure 1.1).
   
   

   Figure 1.1. Academic Language Framework for a 5th Grade English Language Arts Lesson

   
   

   Task	Exemplars	Academic Language
   		Function of Language	Vocabulary	Grammar	Sentence Starter(s)
   Sequence events in one of the chapters.	"First, the sky grew dark and everyone went to the storm shelter. While they were in the barn, Sarah remembered some important mementos in the house. Afterwards, Caleb noticed the colors of the sky were the same as the ocean Sarah described."	sequencing	mementos	adverbs of time	First, ____. Next, _____. Meanwhile, _____. Afterwards, _____.

   
   
2. Write down what you expect students to say as they engage in discussion. What rich oral academic language can they use as they sequence events? Record one or two examples in the Exemplars section. In 5th grade, English-proficient students could be expected to say, "First, the sky grew dark and everyone went to the storm shelter. While they were in the barn, Sarah remembered some important mementos in the house. Afterwards, Caleb noticed the colors of the sky were the same as the ocean Sarah described."
3. Identify the language function word in the task, and record it in the Function of Language section of the template. Examples of language function words are compare, explain, describe, interpret, justify, evaluate, sequence, analyze, and create. (The template shows the verbal noun sequencing, derived from the language function word sequence in the Task column.)
4. Decide what English-language-learning students need in order to engage in this level of academic talk. Record these items in the appropriate parts of the template: Vocabulary, Grammar, and Sentence Starter(s).
   

   Vocabulary: key words needed to engage in the standard; for example, mementos.

   Grammar: grammatical structures and parts of speech; for example, adverbs of time.

   Sentence Starters: sentence starters students will find helpful; for example, First, _____; Next, _____; Meanwhile, _____; and Afterwards, _____.

In Chapter 3, we demonstrate how to use the framework to set language objectives. Chapter 5 illustrates how to use the framework to incorporate cooperative learning structures while implementing Common Core State Standards in mathematics. In Chapters 7, 8, 10, and 11, we apply the framework to the Next Generation Science Standards and the Common Core State Standards via the strategies of nonlinguistic representations, summarizing and note taking, identifying similarities and differences, and generating and testing hypotheses.

The Thinking Language Matrix

Another way to help teachers think about the language that students need in order to be successful is to use McREL's second-language acquisition and taxonomy matrix (see Figure 1.2)—what we call the Thinking Language Matrix (Hill & Björk, 2008a, 2008b). This matrix aligns the levels of thinking from Bloom's taxonomy (Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, & Krathwohl, 1956) to the stages of second-language learning. (For this book, we use Bloom's original taxonomy from 1956. Although there has been a revision and other taxonomies have since been developed, the original Bloom's is most familiar to the majority of teachers. When we present new information, such as aligning stages of second-language acquisition with the taxonomy levels, starting with the familiar can help avoid misapprehensions.)

Figure 1.2. Thinking Language Matrix Example

Using the matrix, teachers can address the language demands in their lessons as follows:

1. Identify the taxonomic level of the task you are asking students to perform (Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation).
2. Ask yourself what you would expect your proficient students to say and do as they participate in the activity. Record this in the Intermediate/Advanced Fluency column. You'll want to begin with this stage and work backward because native English speakers or proficient English language learners will meet the description of this stage, and you can use those speakers to gauge other students' placement.
3. Think about a student you teach who is at one of the earlier stages of second-language acquisition. What is this student going to need in order to be able to participate in a small-group discussion? What is the purpose of the discussion (e.g., to describe, explain, compare, interpret)? What language structure will this student need? Record this in the middle column.
4. Return to the verbs in the taxonomy level and think about your Preproduction students (see Chapter 2 for more information on the stages of second language acquisition). Because they can think at the taxonomic level but cannot verbalize the answer, what can those students do to participate effectively? Can they sketch, symbolize, or illustrate? Record a demonstration in the Preproduction column.

See Appendix B for a blank template of the matrix. The example that follows explains how a teacher might use the process to create the completed matrix shown in Figure 1.2.

The English Language Proficiency Development Framework developed by the Council of Chief State School Officers (2012) offers helpful ways to think about the academic language embedded in the Common Core math standards. For example, Common Core Mathematical Practice Standard 1 expects students to make sense of problems and persevere in solving them (Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010). At a kindergarten level, a student might be asked to "explain data," which would be found under Levels of Thinking in Comprehension. With this in mind, a teacher might expect students to say "There are more red blocks than blue blocks because this set has eight and the other set has six" or "These two sets are equal because they both have seven blocks." The teacher records these examples in the Intermediate/Advanced column. The teacher would then think about the purpose of the small-group discussion and conclude that students are describing how sets are formed. Students then need sentence starters, such as "There are _____ red blocks than blue blocks," or the specific vocabulary words more, less, and equal. This is recorded in the Early Production/Speech Emergence column. The teacher may decide that the Preproduction students can represent sets with more or less by using red and blue blocks (manipulatives) to represent the data and compare the number of blocks in each set. This demonstration is recorded in the Preproduction column.

Examples of the Thinking Language Matrix appear in each of the following chapters to illustrate how to engage students at all stages of second-language acquisition in the levels of Bloom's taxonomy.