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SBI 2. Provide structured opportunities to develop academic language.

Action Step SBI 2 calls for schools to systematically provide students with opportunities to develop academic language.

Part 1 provides a definition of academic language and discusses how schools can provide structured opportunities to develop academic language.

Part 2 discusses explicit academic vocabulary instruction.

Part 3 outlines considerations for developing the academic language of English learners (ELs).

To get started, download the Implementation Guide for this component and refer to the Action Step for this lesson. Examine the Implementation Indicators for each level of implementation and note the Sample Evidence listed at the bottom of the chart.

In school, students encounter specialized language, academic language, used by teachers and in textbooks. Students are expected to understand and use this language, as well, as they listen, speak, read, and write to learn and show their learning. Academic language is different from the social language used with friends and families (Nagy & Townsend, 2012).

Social language is the everyday language that people use with each other. Social language is contextualized. This means that the person speaking and the person listening share a common context. Perhaps they have a shared past experience (e.g., “Remember that time last week when we saw that guy?”) or a shared present experience (e.g., “Take a look at this thing here”).

Academic language, on the other hand, is decontextualized. Because of this, the writer or speaker must rely entirely on the language itself to create context. Academic language tends to be more complex and precise than social language. Sentences tend to have greater grammatical complexity, and the information conveyed is more dense and abstract. The vocabulary words used in academic language tend to be longer and more precise, with more Latin and Greek roots.

For example, when sitting on your back porch, you might say, “Those hummingbirds love my flowers. Even the ones on that [gesturing] plant! They sure help the flowers spread!” However, an academic text might include a sentence such as “Hummingbirds’ taste for nectar enables even the most unsightly flowering plants to propagate successfully.” The content of these sentences is similar, but the language itself is quite different. The table below outlines some of the key differences between social language and academic language.

Social language	Academic language
Used in everyday settings like talking with friends or going to the grocery store May develop more quickly than academic language	Used in academic settings like a discussion about photosynthesis or the text in a textbook Develops along with academic content knowledge
Vocabulary features
Words that rely on context for meaning (“here,” “there,” “that,” “this”) Shorter words Simpler words Common words used across many domains	Precise vocabulary words Longer words Morphologically complex words Specialized words like “product” and “factor” with special meanings in different domains
Sentence features
Some false-start, run-on, and abandoned sentences One idea per sentence Straightforward sentence structures Shorter sentences	Complete sentences Dense content, with many concepts in one sentence Complex sentence structures Longer sentences
Features of extended discourse1
Contextualized language in the “here and now” Concrete concepts Follows predictable formats that differ by context Can be highly sophisticated	Decontextualized language, relying on language to create context Abstract concepts Follows predictable formats that differ by subject area Can be highly sophisticated

¹ Discourse: connected language – beyond the word level. Usually two or more sentences strung together in speaking or writing.

Understanding and using academic vocabulary is an important part of academic language. Developing academic language extends beyond just vocabulary, however. As you can see from the table above, students also need to understand the complex grammatical structures used in academic discourse. Academic language allows students to display in-depth knowledge of complex ideas, as required in all areas of the curriculum (Lucero, 2014; Nagy & Townsend, 2012).

Learning academic language is not learning new words to do the same things that one could have done with other words; it is learning to do new things with language and acquiring new tools for these purposes.

(Nagy & Townsend, 2012, p. 93)

Academic language is a tool that promotes and supports students’ academic thinking. It is specialized and specific across subject areas. A student in a science class may think, speak, and write about nuclear weapons differently than a student in a history class. Student scientists might use precise vocabulary words (abiotic, plate tectonics, valence, electromagnetic spectrum) and might structure their writing and speaking to convey precise scientific thoughts. Student historians might use an entirely different set of vocabulary words (medieval, caliphate, Renaissance, popular sovereignty). They might also use different language structures to make arguments to other historians.

Students in the same classroom will have different levels of academic language. Fortunately, academic language follows predictable formats that can be modeled and taught (Nagy & Townsend, 2012).

You and your team can encourage teachers to consciously use more academic language during instruction. This would include attending to academic terminology (such as “rectangular prism” and “congruent bases and heights” in math class) as well as using complete sentences and academic phrases. For example, instead of asking a student “How do you know?” a teacher might consider asking, “What evidence can you cite to justify your answer?” Hearing academic language provides students with model words, sentences, and discourse that they can begin to incorporate into their linguistic repertoires.

Academic language needs to be modeled and explicitly taught. One way to teach academic language explicitly is to use mentor sentences. These sentences might come from academic texts and have a structure students should learn to understand and use for themselves. For example, in an 8th-grade science class, students may see a sentence like this one: “Aquatic systems, such as ponds, wetlands, rivers, and tidal pools, are ecosystems in bodies of water.” It is useful to explicitly teach how this sentence is structured. The teacher might tell students the following:

The first two words form the subject of the sentence. They are followed by the phrase such as, which tells us examples are coming up. Then there is a list of four examples of aquatic systems.

If we remove the phrase with the examples (ponds, wetlands, rivers, and tidal pools), we see this structure:

[Noun phrase] + is/are + [Noun phrase].

This is a common way that textbooks give examples or definitions for new or important words. In this case, the subject, aquatic systems, is defined as “ecosystems in bodies of water.”

To teach using mentor sentences, the teacher then shares models of other sentences with similar structures. (“Parasites, such as hookworms, fleas, and vampire bats, are organisms that feed off other organisms.”) The teacher then supports students in creating similar sentences using the same structure. More information about using mentor texts and sentences can be found in the To Learn More section at the end of Part 2.

Students also need regular, structured opportunities to develop and practice academic language in speaking and writing. To effectively structure opportunities to use academic language, teachers can set a communication task, model the expected use of academic language, arrange so all students will participate, and then provide appropriate support. In the example above, students are asked to create original sentences using the same structure that was modeled. Students reinforce their understanding by writing sentences and sharing or speaking to each other in partners. These interactions provide important opportunities to practice using academic language and allow students to serve as models for one another.

Finally, in order to systematically support students’ academic language, it is important to develop motivating and safe academic environments where students feel supported by teachers and peers. Students should feel comfortable sharing their work and asking questions. Safe academic environments encourage students to take academic risks, self-regulating their use of academic language. Safe academic environments can also motivate and encourage students to self-regulate their thoughts, feelings, and actions to intentionally support their learning. In other words, students are in charge of their own learning (Schunk & Zimmerman, 2007). Environments such as these are ideal for encouraging students to recognize the difference between their social and academic language varieties (Silva, Weinburgh, & Smith, 2013).

As discussed in Part 1, students need robust vocabulary instruction to develop academic language. Academic vocabulary can be divided into two categories: general academic vocabulary and domain-specific vocabulary. Domain-specific vocabulary words are words students rarely encounter outside of a specific subject area (photosynthesis in science). General academic vocabulary words are used in several subject areas, but their meaning may change (slightly or drastically) across subjects. For example, factor has different meanings in science, social studies, and math. General academic vocabulary words rarely appear in bold type or textbook glossaries, and students benefit from explicit instruction in understanding and using general academic words (McKeown & Beck, 2011).

Unfortunately, there is not enough time to teach all of the words students encounter. In fact, if students are taught too many words in a day, they may get shallow understandings of the words and not use them in their own speaking and writing (Lesaux, Kieffer, Faller, & Kelley, 2010). It is better to provide in-depth instruction on a limited number of words. This way, students can develop complex and nuanced understandings of the words and use them in their speaking and writing (Baker et al., 2014).

Teachers often ask how many words they should teach per day or per week. Research has not identified a specific number for any particular age or group of students beyond the guidance above of “not too many.” Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2013) emphasize the importance of teacher judgment when they say that “a decision as to the number of words might be made on the basis of how many a teacher wants to make room for at the moment. Factors in this decision may include, for example, how large the current vocabulary load is in the classroom, the time of year, and the number and difficulty of other concepts presently being dealt with in the curriculum” (pp. 32–33).

Furthermore, Beck, McKeown, and Kucan offer these suggestions for selecting words to explicitly teach:

• Words that students are likely to encounter in other texts and situations
• Words that students can use to describe their own experience
• Words that directly relate to the other words and ideas students are learning in class or might add more richness to exploring the ideas that have been developed
• Words that contribute to students’ understanding or enriched insight into a text, situation, or lesson

(pp. 38–39)

Providing explicit and robust instruction in these words supports students’ reading comprehension along with their abilities to use academic language to speak and write (Baker et al., 2014; Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2013). Specifically, some educators have used a six-step routine for explicit vocabulary instruction (Simmons et al., 2010; Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts, 2013).

1. Have students say the word.
2. Provide a definition of the word using student-friendly explanations and visuals.
3. Have students discuss what is known about the word.
4. Provide examples and non-examples of the word.
5. Engage in deep-processing activities by asking questions, using graphic organizers, or having students act out the word.
6. Scaffold students to create powerful sentences with the new word.

This six-step routine is research-based and effective, and it is an example of one way to teach academic vocabulary. Whatever routine you and your team choose to implement at your school, it is important that the routine is systematically used across your campus. The goal would be for teachers in all classrooms and in all content areas to use the routine on a regular basis. This kind of systematic, schoolwide approach exposes students to the routine many times across all subjects. Distributed practice like this supports the vocabulary development of students throughout a school year, as well as into subsequent school years.

Another component of academic vocabulary instruction is explicitly teaching students how to learn new words on their own while they are reading. Word-learning strategies include using context clues and breaking words into meaningful parts (i.e., prefixes, suffixes, roots, base words). For example, some educators have found success explicitly teaching students to follow a routine when they encounter a word they do not understand:

Fix-up strategies for unknown words

• Reread the sentence with the word and look for key ideas to help you figure out the word. Think about what makes sense.
• Reread the sentences before and after the word looking for clues.
• Look for a prefix or suffix in the word that might help.
• Break the word apart and look for smaller words.

(Klinger & Vaughn, 1998)

Structured opportunities

Academic language development involves using academic vocabulary in a meaningful way to express ideas and learning. As discussed in Part 1, such expression requires the use of the discourse level of language: strings of sentences put together to communicate beyond individual words. Students benefit from explicitly structured opportunities to develop and practice using academic language this way both orally and in writing.

Structured opportunities include activities in which students must use the new vocabulary to express themselves, often for demonstrating new learning. Here are some examples of structured opportunities to discuss the vocabulary word compromise in social studies:

Students might categorize several sentences as examples or non-examples of compromise.

Each person takes a short turn, so both people get a chance. Her older brother used the computer for the whole time, and she didn’t get a chance.

Students could also read a passage describing a situation that may or may not be a compromise.

Maritza and Steve have a disagreement about using a tablet, and a teacher helps them make a fair plan for sharing it.

They could then complete a sentence frame.

This story is an example/is not an example of compromise. When you compromise, you ____________.

When they disagreed, Maritza and Steve ____________, ________________, and _____________. Therefore, you can see how this is an example/is not an example of compromise.

Activities such as these enable students to use the words they have learned in ways that extend beyond understanding their definitions. Sentence frames can be used in any part of the lesson cycle, not just when talking about vocabulary. Teachers can provide sentence frames to support students any time they are asked to engage in discussions using academic English, which ideally takes place regularly. You will find more information about sentence frames in Part 3.

TO LEARN MORE: If you want more information about explicit and robust vocabulary instruction, you may want to review the following resources:

A series of related professional development sessions were developed by The Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts. You can find the materials for these sessions by scrolling down to the Standards-based Instruction section under TLI 2015. There is a “Vocabulary and Oral Language Development” presentation for each of these grade clusters: K–2, 3–5, and 6–12.

Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to English Learners in Elementary and Middle School, an educator’s practice guide from What Works Clearinghouse, provides an explicit outline of the existing research on academic vocabulary instruction for English learners. The recommendations align with effective practices for all learners.

Write for Texas provides guidance on using mentor texts and mentor sentences for writing, a key skill of academic language.

As mentioned in Part 1, all students learn academic language at school. They build on the social language used at home and in their communities. For students who speak a different native language, learning academic language in English can be difficult. English learners (ELs) need more intensive supports tailored to their specific linguistic needs.

The development of academic language and academic skills (thinking, reading, writing, and analyzing) in the native language supports success in developing academic language in English. For students in bilingual and dual-language programs, academic language is best developed in both languages.

Because of the link between first- and second-language development, it is useful for teachers to know about the first language resources their students bring to class. For example, you and your team might work with district staff to find out about EL students’ school history in their native language, such as whether they were able to enroll and participate in school regularly in their native country or whether they received bilingual instruction in previous schools in the United States. If possible, you could also provide your staff with data on their students’ native language academic skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening, as well as subject-area knowledge. When available, native language assessment data and transcripts or permanent records could provide this information.

Knowing about students’ native language skills allows teachers to make connections between those skills and new learning in academic English. This is especially important for students who are transitioning from instruction in their first language (such as Spanish) to English instruction.

In academic settings, ELs carry a “double load”; that is, they must learn language and academic content at the same time. As teachers of ELs, it is important to help ELs balance these two tasks by reducing the load of language when academic content may be especially difficult. On the other hand, when the instructional focus is language development, teachers want to use content that is less cognitively demanding and highly contextualized.

To bridge ELs' current English proficiency and the academic language demands of classrooms, many ELs need scaffolded support. Temporary supports, aligned to students’ language needs, can help reduce the language load that students bear when attempting to master academic content. For example, using visuals or real-life examples can provide contextual support for students when encountering new academic content. Strategically pairing or grouping students can also help reduce the language load, as students can serve as supports for each other.

Sentence frames

Sentence frames provide models for academic language and are scaffolds for students’ academic language use. They are a way to introduce academic discourse structures, model how they are used in a specific discipline, and scaffold students’ use of academic discourse. As you saw in the examples in Part 2, a sentence frame is an academic sentence with one or more key words or phrases removed. Sentence frames can be called sentence stems or sentence starters when students are asked to complete the sentence.

One impact of the Napoleonic Wars on Latin America was _________.

Sentence frames can also introduce more complex sentence structures.

The ______________ experiment demonstrates Newton’s _____________ Law because it __________ and __________.

Sentence frames help jump-start students’ thinking about academic content and can be powerful for ELs (and all students) when writing or speaking.

Providing explicit instruction in academic English can also reduce students’ language load and help build ELs’ academic language, both at the vocabulary word and the discourse level. As we discussed in Part 1, for example, it may be useful to provide explicit instruction on sentence structures. Students who have received explicit instruction on a particular sentence structure are more likely to understand similar sentences when reading and listening. In this way, previous explicit instruction reduces students’ language load, enabling them to focus on academic content.

After providing explicit instruction, it is important to give students many structured opportunities for practice in meaningful ways. Giving students both time and support to talk and write, centered on text or academic content, provides them opportunities to reinforce new language structures and skills.

One of the skills students need explicit instruction on is using their native language knowledge as a tool for learning and understanding English. The transfer of academic skills from the native language to academic English is not automatic. For example, many ELs need explicit instruction to help them make use of cognates. Cognates are words that look similar and have similar meanings in English and another language (for example, surprise in English and sorpresa in Spanish).

Many words in academic English are cognates with common words in Spanish (insect is a cognate of the Spanish insecto). Everyday Spanish more often retains Latin roots (insecto). Common words in English often come from Germanic or Old English roots (bug), while academic English includes many words of Latin origin (insect). This gives Spanish-speaking ELs a resource for learning academic English. Explicitly teaching and practicing strategies to recognize cognates can be an effective step in increasing Spanish-speaking ELs’ comprehension of academic English.

Although social language can be an important building block for academic language development, educators do not need to wait for students to fully develop social language before teaching academic language concepts. When instruction is carefully planned and builds on students’ linguistic resources, academic language skills can develop alongside social language. Skills targeted during instruction should always be appropriate for students’ age and grade level. For example, an EL student in 9th grade can begin learning the academic language used to meet a grade-appropriate expectation, such as comparing and contrasting visual and non-visual texts in the media (English I, 12[A]), even though social language skills are still being developed.

In the same vein, ELs do not need to have highly developed oral language skills to benefit from opportunities to develop literacy. ELs can develop reading and writing skills while they develop oral proficiency. ELs who have attained grade-level literacy skills in their native language can use this knowledge as they transfer to English. For newcomers who have not had the opportunity to develop native language literacy, you and your team may need to provide more intensive, differentiated support to accelerate their literacy development. The development of literacy skills can be further supported when teachers build on knowledge students have in their first languages. That said, building oral language proficiency is critical to literacy development and academic achievement, so teachers need to purposefully plan and deliver instruction that builds ELs’ language knowledge.

The different language domains (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) are mutually supportive. Explicit instruction in reading, for example, supports students’ reading and speaking skills. However, many ELs need academic language development in each of these domains and would benefit from explicit instruction.

For teachers to effectively meet the academic language needs of ELs, they may need support in accessing and using helpful student data when planning instruction. Understanding the language proficiency and previous instructional opportunities ELs have, teachers can better determine the type and degree of language support they need. These are some steps you and your team can take to support your faculty in promoting ELs’ development of academic English:

• Provide all teachers a list of their students who are identified as EL.
• Provide teachers with the TELPAS and other language proficiency data for those students.
• Provide professional development on accessing, interpreting, and using language proficiency data, differentiating instruction, and implementing sheltered instruction in different content areas.
• Provide teachers with information about their students’ native languages.
• Develop or procure literacy resources for students in their native languages.
• In dual and bilingual programs, provide professional development on the program model and its implementation, especially for new staff.

TO LEARN MORE: You may want to review the following resources to find out more about specific evidence-based practices for developing academic language for ELs:

Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to English Learners in Elementary and Middle School, an educator’s practice guide from What Works Clearinghouse, provides an explicit outline of the existing research on academic language instruction and includes specific suggestions for teachers. Recommendation 2 directly relates to the development of academic language. While these strategies were researched with ELs, they are effective in developing academic language in all students.

Accelerating Language Acquisition for Secondary English Language Learners is an online professional development course that illustrates how to explicitly teach academic English to ELs in a secondary content-area setting, though the practices also work well with non-EL students. The course includes opportunities for participant interaction as well as videos of teachers in classrooms and planning sessions.

The English Learner Took Kit, issued by the U.S. Department of Education Office of English Language Acquisition, helps state and local education agencies understand and meet their obligations to support the education of ELs.

NEXT STEPS: Depending on the progress of your campus in providing structured opportunities for students to develop academic language, you may want to consider the following next steps:

• Review existing practices for developing academic language and vocabulary.
• Review instructional methods for developing academic language.
• Review resources available to support developing academic language.
• Create a plan for a schoolwide system for teaching academic language.
• Identify teachers’ professional development needs for developing academic language.
• Provide professional development and ongoing support for teachers, such as that listed at the end of Part 3.

SBI 2. Provide structured opportunities to develop academic language.

With your site/campus-based leadership team, review your team’s self-assessed rating for Action Step SBI 2 in the TSLP Implementation Status Ratings document and then respond to the four questions in the assignment.

TSLP Implementation Status Ratings 6-12

In completing your assignment with your team, the following resources and information from this lesson’s content may be useful to you:

• Refer to Part 1 for information on academic language and specific strategies to develop students’ academic language.
• Refer to Part 2 for more information on academic vocabulary and the specific strategies that teachers can use to further develop students’ academic vocabulary.
• Refer to Part 3 for information about supporting the development of academic language for English learners.

Next Steps also contains suggestions that your campus may want to consider when you focus your efforts on this Action Step.

To record your responses, go to the Assignment template for this lesson and follow the instructions.

Baker, S., Lesaux, N., Jayanthi, M., Dimino, J., Proctor, C. P., Morris, J., . . . Newman-Gonchar, R. (2014). Teaching academic content and literacy to English learners in elementary and middle school (NCEE 2014-4012). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from the NCEE website: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/PracticeGuide/19.

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2013). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.

Klinger, J. K., & Vaughn, S. (1998). Using collaborative strategic reading. Teaching Exceptional Children, 33, 32–37.

Lesaux, N. K., Kieffer, M. J., Faller, S. E., & Kelley, J. G. (2010). The effectiveness and ease of implementation of an academic vocabulary intervention for linguistically diverse students in urban middle schools. Reading Research Quarterly, 45(2), 196–228.

Lucero, A. (2014). Teachers’ use of linguistic scaffolding to support the academic language development of first-grade emergent bilingual students. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 14(4), 534–561. doi: 10.1177/1468798413512848

McKeown, M. G., & Beck, I. L. (2011). Making vocabulary interventions engaging and effective. In R. E. O’Connor, & P. F. Vadasy (Eds.), Handbook of reading interventions (pp. 13–168). New York, NY: The Guilford Press.

Nagy, W., & Townsend, D. (2012). Words as tools: Learning academic vocabulary as language acquisition. Reading Research Quarterly, 47(1), 91–108. doi: 10.1002/RRQ.011

Schunk, D. H., & Zimmerman, B. J. (2007). Influencing children’s self-efficacy and self-regulation of reading and writing through modeling. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 23, 7–25. doi: 10.1080/10573560600837578

Silva, C., Weinburgh, M., & Smith, K. H. (2013). Not just good science teaching: Supporting academic language development. Voices from the Middle, 20(4), 34–42.

Simmons, D., Hairrell, A., Edmonds, M., Vaughn, S., Larsen, R., Willson, V., Rupley, W., & Byrns, G. (2010). A comparison of multiple-strategy methods: Effects on fourth-grade students’ general and content-specific reading comprehension and vocabulary development. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 3(2), 121–156. doi: 10.1080/19345741003596890

Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. (2013). Vocabulary and oral language development. Austin, TX: Author.