What is academic language? How do we move our English language learners beyond survival
English? I'm Delia Pompa. Please join me for our next Colorín Colorado webcast, academic
language for English language learners.
[music]
Funding for this Colorín Colorado webcast is provided by the American Federation of
Teachers with additional support from the National Council of La Raza.
Hello. I'm Delia Pompa. Welcome to the Colorín Colorado webcast series. Today we're going
to talk about academic language for English language learners. Joining me is Dr. Robin
Scarcella. She is the Professor and Director of the Program in academic language and ESL
at the University of California Irvine campus.
So, long title. It must be an important topic. What is academic language?
Academic language is a language used in school context. It's the language of text. It's a
language of prestige and power in the United States. And those who have acquired academic
language tend to go on and become very successful in academic settings.
Unfortunately, those students who do not apply our academic language oftentimes fail and
sometimes end up dropping out of school.
I believe you brought an example to share with us.
Yes, I did. I brought these two letters from my student Vaughn. Vaughn came from Vietnam
at age five. And she went through all of our public schools. And you can see that she wrote
this letter because she was really distraught. Because she'd been placed in a beginning level
English as a second language writing course at the University of California Irvine.
I was the Director of the Program. And she was my student. She did not want to be in
this class. And so she wrote this letter. And she actually brought all her work from
her high school. And she had poetry to share with me. And she had essays and a variety
of different written work.
All of which was written in a very interesting style of informal, everyday English. It wasn't
academic. And so she wrote this beautiful letter saying that she had read many books,
that she had written and spoken English since-she said-"since time I come to the U.S."
And all her friends speak English. She always speaks English with her friends in the dorm,
and she "reads many book," she writes. "Please do not makes me lose the face. I have competent
in English."
And so you then put her through a program of instruction.
Even though she received straight A's in English in high school, I had to put her in my ESL
academic English sequence of three courses. And at the end of the year, she wrote the
second letter.
And so, in the second letter, you could tell the difference.
You can see this amazing difference in her vocabulary, in her grammatical development,
even in her rhetoric. "Hi, Robin," she begins. And then she goes on and she asks for a letter
of recommendation. Well, she does get this letter. She does actually get an internship
in Washington, D.C.
And then she goes on after she graduates from UCI into graduate school. And you can see
what excellent English she uses. Now, is her English perfect? Native English? No, of course
not. But it's very good.
She's got all the conventions. And she's got academic language.
She can go into any field she wants to.
Now, this brings up the question about the difference between social language and academic
language. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Yes. You can see that in social everyday English, it's possible to communicate imprecisely without
using English grammatically correctly. You don't need articles, "the" and "a" to really
show what you mean. You don't need to have prepositions or use the correct preposition
in your language. You can use basic everyday words. You can make your language very colorful
by using slang. You can avoid pronoun reference if you want to. Especially if the addressee
already knows what you're talking about.
Do you need to get to a certain level of social language before you move onto academic language?
What's interesting is in the United States, we believe that students must acquire informal
English first and then they can acquire academic English afterwards. In reality, it's very
helpful for students to be able to begin a conversation and keep it going, have those
basic conversational skills.
But at the same time, we can be laying the foundation for academic language. We need
not wait until students have completely mastered informal, everyday English.
Well, are there activities a teacher can plan to help a student understand the difference
between social language and academic language?
Yes, there are. One of my favorite activities is giving students a passage of academic language
and then a passage of informal language and comparing them step-by-step. So that students
understand: "Wow. When I look at informal English, it uses a lot of repetition of words.
And when I look at academic language, it has a variety of words and more sophisticated
words.
When I look at informal English, it's perfectly fine to begin a sentence with the words "and"
and "but." But when I look at academic language, academic language has transition words such
as however and moreover and in addition.
When I look at informal English, I can use stuff and slang such as guy, cool, awesome.
But when I use academic language, I avoid using slang." So there's big differences.
And that's a great strategy, instructional strategy for teaching students to recognize
the difference.
So I give them two passages, one informal, one academic. And then I have them get together
in groups or with a pair, partner, and actually write out a list of the features that characterize
these. I do this again and again. So that students understand that academic English
is different from informal English.
Well, you've talked about some written examples. But you started to talk a little bit about
oral examples. Is it mainly a written problem? Or does it show up in oral language also?
Teachers often think that academic English is not an oral problem. It's a challenge,
both in writing and in speech. And it's very important that teachers scaffold students'
development of oral academic language. So that they're able to participate in academic
discussions and debates and make presentations in front of their peers.
Teachers can use a variety of activities to scaffold their production of academic language.
One of my favorite ones is preparing students in advance to talk orally in front of others
by having them partner up and actually teach them academic words and grammatical features
that they might use in making an academic presentation.
And then the next step is, of course, having them practice these with their partner before
they do the oral presentation.
Because too often teachers have students, English learners, make presentations when
the students aren't prepared.
They have no practice in it.
They need to practice, practice, practice.
Well, speaking of practice, I think we've come to understand that a knowledge of a student's
ability to read in his native language has a lot to do with predicting how he's going
to do in English. Is the same true for academic language?
Absolutely. We know that if students have acquired academic language in their first
languages, for example, in Spanish and then they come to the United States, they are able
to acquire academic language much faster than if they didn't know academic language in their
first language.
What you've described, and you work with elder students, don't you?
Yes.
But we've heard that they are beginning to test younger students for academic language.
When ideally should teachers begin to worry about English, academic language, and working
with students?
We need to be concerned about teaching academic language at all grade levels and in all proficiency
levels as well. However, when students first come into kindergarten, we're not going to
be teaching them very sophisticated ways of writing and ways of expressing themselves
in English.
We're going to be teaching them grade appropriate kindergarten talk, setting the background,
the foundation, of academic language. And so, yes, we're going to be teaching them the
conversational skills of the kindergarten. But we're also going to be teaching them vocabulary
that's going to help them to acquire academic language later on.
By the time children reach the fourth grade, we are going to be transitioning into teaching
more sophisticated academic language skills. And once they reach high school, we're going
to have to make sure that students know a large vocabulary of academic words used across
academic disciplines. And they have access to and they're able to use more complicated
grammatical structures.
Well, tell us a little bit more about how students of different ages need to learn different
kinds of things.
Yes, it's important that we make our instruction absolutely age appropriate. So when working
with the young children, kindergarteners, for example, we found that young children
are great language learners. And they love to participate in instructional conversations
that are specifically designed to teach academic words, language structures, even the discourse.
Just to help our viewers, can you give us an example of something that a young student
might learn that's academic language versus what an elder student would learn?
Sure. A young child is often going to be participating in show and tell, for example. But there are
very school based ways to participate in show and tell and ways that are very informal.
And the steps of participating in a show and tell for a young child has to be made explicit.
Like what's a word you would use that's academic?
So today I'm going to "share" with you. Okay? Not just "tell" or "say" or "talk" about.
Learned a new word there.
I'm going to share a particular experience I have had. Okay. Now, you've used the words
sharing and experience. And these are very age appropriate. And you they're sophisticated
for a young child. What I wouldn't expect a young child to do is a literary, a complex
literary analysis.
And would you expect an older student to do that?
Absolutely.
Okay.
Absolutely.
Well, you've presented a wonderful overview. So let's get into some of the detail. What
areas of language are specific to academic language? Are there areas of language that
are more specific to academic language say than social language?
Yes. All language proficiency consists of several different components. So when I think
of language proficiency, I always start thinking of phonology, of phonological component. So
in academic English, a young child, anybody, needs to know the phonological component consisting
of the sounds of the English language.
And they would have to know how to spell in English and that's particularly important
in academic language, but not so important in informal language. And they would have
to know the phonological features of the English language.
For example to pronounce academic words. Knowing the difference, for example, between anthropology
and a shift in stress, anthropological; morphology, morphological...
That's a good example. We don't often think that you have to learn the difference.
No. And yet, English learners really do need to know these shifts in the stress. And so
the phonological component is very important. Also, in addition to that, the vocabulary
component. We're not going to see many changes in our students' test scores certainly on
all of the academic tests we give until teachers teach vocabulary on an ongoing, everyday basis.
Vocabulary's extraordinarily important in academic English.
Give me an example. Go back to anthropology, anthropological. How would a teacher actually
teach that? Is that by teaching vocabulary? Is that by giving examples? What does a teacher
do to do that?
It's a very good question, Delia. I think the answer is the teacher is going to teach
vocabulary systematically and make sure that the students don't just learn the meaning
of words, but know how to use a word.
So in teaching anthropology, anthropological, I would have the students listen to the word
and repeat it at least three times, anthropology, anthropology, anthropology. Use it in a sentence
from their textbook. So they get to see the whole sentence as it occurs.
And then I would talk about it to teach them how I would use it, making up other sentences.
And then I'd have them use it. And they'd use it not just alone. But they'd use it in
a sentence with a partner. And I'd have to do this again and again and again.
Knowing that all language learners aren't great learners at language. But some students
just need to have more practice using the language and practice using the language accurately,
not incorrectly.
There are so many aspects of language that second language learners need to develop and
learn. How does a teacher choose what aspects of language to teach as academic language?
When the teacher is choosing a reading passage and teaching reading, the students are going
to be doing reading. The teachers, their primary concern is looking at those words and identifying
the words that an English language learner is going to have difficulty understanding
and will undermine the student's efforts to understand that text.
And oftentimes, that would be an academic word, not always. And it's really important
for teachers of English learners to know that it might be important to identify an academic
word such as stimulate if a student's having difficulty learning. Or it might be important
for the teacher to identify a single preposition or an adverb such as "hardly" or a conjunction
such as "and."
The student's having difficulty learning. And that will make a difference in the student's
comprehension. That's different in production.
Would the teacher be so specific as to say here's "stimulate" and you use it here. Another
way you say it is X. Is it that specific?
Yes, it's that specific. It's absolutely that specific. It would be good-if you're only
trying to teach students the meaning of words. And this is the case when you native speakers.
They need to just say stimulate means and you give a meaning and a definition.
But for English language learners, it's different. Because we want students not just to understand
their text. This is where I was going with your question. But to be able to use the words
in production. And we have been ignoring word use for a long time. And teachers really need
to support the way students actually use words.
So when students are going to be talking about the text, they need to know how to use the
words. A really good activity for doing that, for teaching students how to use new words,
is to give students a word bank and then to talk about the words and how they're used
in the text.
And then to talk about how the teacher uses the words. Then to give the students the words,
the definitions and a model sentence. And say: turn to your partner and I would like
you to use some of the words we've discussed in describing X, Y, or Z.
So it goes beyond definition.
Absolutely has to go beyond definitions if you want children to be able to use words
accurately. And we do.
Thank you so much. That was a very good overview. Now we're going to take a look at a school
in Oregon where teachers are working on pinpointing those key vocabulary words and where young
children, English language learners, are working on reading comprehension as part of their
academic language training. [music]
To reach Heritage Elementary School, you have to travel thirty miles south of Portland,
Oregon, past hazelnut orchards and Russian Orthodox churches.
We have children who are ethnic Russians from Russia, from Argentina, Latvia, Tajikistan,
Brazil, Turkey, China. These kids can speak some English. But that's hardly enough to
get by in school.
One misconception is that people feel that once a child starts speaking English and communicating
with basic oral communication in the playground or at school, that child is able to succeed
academically.
It's just not the case. Because what some call survival English is a long way from mastering
even the third grade academic curriculum. For Linea Salzman, part of the job is teaching
the kids one word at a time. First in their native Russian and then in English.
Plemya in English it means "tribe."
It's critical to be this explicit. Because Russian is so different from English.
Totem pole.
And the school is relentless in making sure their students understand what they read.
Now, I'm not going to show you every picture in the book. I've chosen a few that I thought
would really help us to explore this idea of fire.
In Larry Connolly's class, the kids are doing what's called a picture walk. They use the
picture and draw on their background knowledge to predict what the story will be about.
Well I've got a big question for you guys. What do you think this is a story about?
Don't use matches and lighters. Or else you're going to get burned.
The work may seem painstaking. But Heritage is committed to creating readers who will
have a deep understanding of what they read.
So often, the kids move through the text so quickly that they're not understanding much.
And so we're using those cognitive strategies as a way of slowing them down and getting
them kind of invested in the text.
The last teacher, the teacher mentioned having students slow down and invest in the text.
What are some of the strategies that help students do that and sort of acquire academic
language? Certainly, the teacher doesn't say slow down and invest in the text. Not to the
students anyway.
No. A close reading of text is very important for English language learners who need to
acquire academic language. A teacher can have the student choose a very short reading passage
and read that passage aloud to the students. So that the students get the melody of the
language.
Okay. Now, what the teacher is doing is slowing down. And then after the students hear the
language, the teacher can explain what's in that very short reading passage and then ask
the students to read it again this time focusing on a few very specific features of academic
language. And, of course, the teacher doesn't say now I want you to look at academic language.
But instead, the teacher might say we're going to be looking at how this piece of writing
flows by looking at pronouns. And we're going to be underlining the pronouns and drawing
a circle around the noun to which they refer. Okay. In this way, the students are learning
the pronoun reference system in English.
Which is a huge stumbling block. And it improves their reading comprehension. Because now they
know exactly what the he/she, it/we/they refer to. There's other things that the teacher
can do. One of the features of academic language are words and their associates, fixed expressions
or collocations. We don't think about it.
Say that again? Fixed expressions and?
Fixed expressions that are also called collocations. These are words and their associates. They're
words that go together. We don't often think about it. But certain words just go together.
Like what?
We say... peanut butter and jelly. Well, there's no jelly and peanut butter. You say salt and
paper, not pepper and salt. Mr. and Mrs., not Mrs. and Mr. It's important that students
learn these fixed expressions.
They're markers of knowing a second language well.
They're markers of knowing a second language well. And they help the student use the language
precisely. And when they're not used precisely, a convention is broken. They're expected and
preferred. And it irritates the native speaker when you go in.
So that's an interesting way of looking at academic language. In some ways, it's really
speaking like a native speaker and being able to sort of go with the flow.
Yes, absolutely. It absolutely is accurately and effectively and obtaining your communicative
objective. So reading closely a text and looking at pronominal reference is really important.
Looking at the way synonyms are used. Looking at word families, dissecting the paragraph
very carefully, and talking about it helps students to incorporate the language that
the author is using into his or her speech.
So one of my favorite activities for getting students to use academic language is summarization.
In summarization, what students do is they read a very short passage and they summarize
it orally to a friend.
Now, this may seem boring to you or me. But it's a real challenge for a non-native speaker.
What they do is they appropriate the author's language into their own. And they begin to
acquire the language. Or they can change partners several times. And you can...you can actually
hear them getting more and more fluent. And, of course, it always helps to model the paragraph
to the students before they do this.
You know, I'm thinking as a potential instructor working with teenagers say and some of the
strategies that you describe really make the student focus very intently on a sentence
or a paragraph. What kinds of instructional tricks does the teacher pull out of her bag
to help the student not get bored frankly? Because they're teenagers.
Right. With teenagers-teenagers are wonderful to work with because they have such inquisitive
minds. And they're questioning everything. And so I would first of all explain, make
it every very explicit, what the language objective is. So today, we are going to be
working on academic vocabulary of this specific passage on poverty.
Teenagers, being very interested in equity issues, I would assume that this text on poverty
goes along with something in the textbook. And we're going to be talking about ways to
eliminate or to stop poverty. And so I would be having them summarize the text and then
following that, I would give them some ideas for ways to stop poverty, some vocabulary
and some complete sentences to really get them going in case they lack proficiency.
Then when they pair up, they have already acquired the language proficiency to participate
in a discussion on the topic of how do you prevent poverty. Because now they know that
you can say we can stop poverty by plus verb plus "-ing" doing the following. And then
they can practice using those expressions in sentences and expressing their own beliefs-this
is not boring to a partner before they participate in an oral discussion with the entire class
or maybe even make a presentation in front of the class.
Students always perform to the expectations. We don't expect a lot of teenagers. We need
to expect more. Once they know that we expect them to think critically about issues and
to use academic language, they will do it. Especially when they know that we are going
to scaffold and help them acquire the language first, give them adequate time to practice
this in a safe environment in which they won't be intimidated and then perform in front of
their classmates.
Now, I'm imagining you have some of those same skills you have to teach say to third
graders. But you're going to have a different strategy. Do you have a different strategy
at each grade level?
Absolutely. It has to be cognitively appropriate as well as linguistically appropriate. Also
keeping in mind that the students affect as well, at these different grade levels. When
teaching young children, young children are highly capable of learning language.
We can teach some features of the language very explicitly. We can say that two plus
two "equals," with an "S," four. We can talk about the zzz sound of a bumble bee. And we
can get little ones out of their seats and moving around which is what we need to do.
We can engage them in songs that present them with academic language and jazz chants as
well. We can be using even total physical response at times to teach them some of the
academic words they need to know.
We can teach them language games, language repetition. We can use choral repetition with
little ones and direct instruction. Absolutely.
I can hear the wheels turning for teachers watching this thinking: All right, how am
I going to incorporate this into my day? Should this be a separate block of time? Do you setup
a separate block of time to teach academic language?
Absolutely. The reason we need to do this is if we don't give attention to academic
language, it's easy to overlook it. Now, when you're teaching little ones K through three,
I would absolutely make sure that they have access to the curriculum.
And in addition, give them that extra time to learn academic language that they so need.
In addition to the core curriculum. And it needs to support that core curriculum, not
be so different from it that it's yet more language that students need to have. But rather
supporting that core curriculum.
When a child, however, comes in at grade four, that child is going to be so far behind in
terms of learning the language needed to learn academic language in content areas. That student's
going to need to have an intensive language program with lots and lots of instruction
in the area of academic English.
Every single day, students need vocabulary instruction. Every single day if all of their
content, they need reading comprehension instruction. And every single day, they need writing instruction.
Every single day: writing. They should be writing every single day. As well as direct
scaffolded instruction of oral language.
I have a couple of questions that come to mind. The first is you say every single day.
For five minutes every single day? For twenty minutes every single day? How much time should
we devote to this, should teachers devote to this?
Well, I think in the younger grades, students need English language instruction. The amount
of time is going to vary according to their needs. So if students have instructional gaps
in their education, of course, you're going to need to give them more English language
instruction. Because you need to fill in these gaps.
But if they don't have instructional gaps and they come in in grades K through three,
it might be enough to give them an extra forty minutes-a block of time each day of forty-five
minutes. That might be just sufficient.
Once they get into the upper grades, they're going to need more time. More than an hour
of daily English language instruction that includes a component of academic language.
You talked about setting up a separate block of time. I'm also imagining that during the
content instruction time, you're going to infuse some of the academic language strategies
in there. And let's pick writing. Because you had some examples earlier. What are some
strategies teachers can infuse into the writing process to focus on academic language?
Great. Some very useful strategies for teaching writing, one is anytime you give a writing
assignment, don't assume that the students have the language in order to accomplish-to
write the assignment.
Give them samples of what you expect. Multiple samples are even better. You know, it's hard
to write. It's hard for anybody to write when you don't know what's expected of you. So
you want to make your expectations abundantly clear.
In this essay I expect you to have a thesis statement. And I expect you to put it at the
very end of the paragraph. Here are some examples. And this is what a thesis sentence does. So
you're actually getting very explicit step-by-step instruction.
And then an example.
And then an example. And also, very importantly is I give students the vocabulary, their grammatical
structures, and some tips for organizing essays before they start. And I encourage them to
use the words and the grammatical structures and the rhetorical tips in the writing. And
I tell them, you know, if you do this it will really help improve your writing. This is
not cheating. This is what I really want you to do.
These are supports.
They're supports. And every time they write, they get better and better. And this type
of advice is very good, not just for a writing instruction, English language, arts, teachers,
say in high school or middle school, but for the science teacher in fourth grade who is
having the students write a lab report.
Or for the social studies teacher who is having the students perhaps write a persuasive essay.
So, what I really would like all teachers to do is to teach writing very explicitly,
step-by-step, with lots and lots of support. And, of course, some instructional feedback.
But if you remember the letter from Vaughn, she had not received any instructional feedback.
So she was one of the students who you could show her a word such as "firstofall" or "secondofall"
or "thirdofall" and she would say, well, that's a word. I had a student like that. And I said
here's "firstofall". And the student said, yes, it's a word. And I said, no, it's not.
It's "first of all." And the student said, well, no, it's "firstofall" and "secondofall"
and "thirdofall." And so I had to take out a dictionary, a learners dictionary, very
important.
A very confident student.
Yes, very confident. But she had never had any feedback. And so she had looked at the
dictionary and she said, oh. It's first of all. You're right. Ah-hah. But if students
don't get any instructional feedback, then they use forms again and again and again and
they're writing, they will stabilize over time.
And that's when it's so important for a teacher to give some instructional feedback. Not in
a punitive sense. But in an instructional, in a very constructive way. So that students
will learn from their mistakes. Learning that a mistake is neither good nor bad, but just
something that is perfectable, that will help them to learn from.
So it's a low stakes way before you get to the high stakes.
Yes, absolutely. And for some students, you'll have to tell them again and again and again
and again. You'll have to be teaching subject/verb agreement. But they will learn. And that's
what teachers need to know. And it's, of course, very good if teachers develop a technique
that they use for providing instructional feedback that the whole school site adheres
to.
Whether or not it's just underlining those words that are used incorrectly or highlighting
them or writing in the margin or giving students some rules or using what I like symbols.
Oh, so this is a strategy that I hadn't heard. So everyone in the school should use that
same approach.
Absolutely. We promote this in whole school districts. So that way when students go from
one grade to the next, they don't have to learn new symbols. They know exactly what
kind of feedback their teachers are going to give them. They know when the teacher's
going to give them this feedback. They don't consider it at all punitive. They expect it.
You know, there are so many challenges teachers face. And this is an area that teachers are
beginning to explore. They're beginning to explore academic language. They want to do
the right thing. But they bump into these walls. And one of the walls seems to be states
taking on alignment of curriculum ... of content actually and language. Can you tell us a little
bit more about that?
Yes. It's an enormous challenge. States have been trying to link content objectives and
language objectives. I think it's very important that teachers know when they're teaching content
that the English language learners also need to know language. And they need to have language
objectives.
It's good for them to know what they're teaching. The difficult part arises when the teacher
chooses text, stories, reading passages, textbook passages, to help them-help the students acquire
the content standards. Because anytime they choose a reading passage, there'll be a number
of different language objectives that could be taught.
And when they teach a different reading text or have the students do a different oral language
assignment, they're going to need different language objectives. So it's not possible
therefore just to take the language content and objectives and just align them without
looking at what it is that children do with language in the classroom and what it is they're
reading in the classroom.
So not losing that focus on language and deliberately teaching language.
That's right.
You have said so much to us. Why don't you take a sip of water? Well, I want to talk
about another issue. And that has to do...it relates to what you just talked about. English
language learners often are taught by many different teachers. And I wonder who's responsible
for teaching academic language?
We are all responsible for teaching academic language. Teachers are responsible for teaching
academic language. In the elementary school it's the primary instructor who has the responsibility
for laying the foundational piece for teaching academic language, a strong English language
proficiency, a language proficiency in phonology and spelling and the sounds of the language
and grammar and vocabulary absolutely critical.
And in the upper grades, that individual is going to be responsible for teaching academic
language of reading, writing, speaking and listening. However, in the-the individuals
in elementary school should be working very, very closely with a reading specialist.
If students can't read, they can't develop academic language. And the elementary school
teachers need to be working very closely with their ESL, ELD specialist, absolutely.
We get into sort of a classic question around that when you get to high school.
Yes.
Let's take the example of the biology teacher.
Oh, yes. Perfect example.
Biology teacher is teaching something that doesn't seem very language related to some
people. So how does that biology teacher support academic language?
The biology teacher has a critical role. The biology teacher, first of all, should be relieved
to know that I don't make that person responsible for teaching reading. If the child cannot
read, doesn't know how to decode words, that biology teacher doesn't have to become a reading
specialist. We have a scarcity.
I know some biology teachers.
Yes, they don't have to worry about that. Nor does a teacher have to worry if they've
got somebody who's just beginning language, learning, just arrived in the United States.
The teacher should know how to teach survival skills, yes.
But we really are required by law to make sure that that beginning language learner
gets enough proficiency to access language. And a biology teacher will never be an English
language specialist who can give that foundational piece.
The biology teacher, however, has the responsibility of teaching reading comprehension. And those
biology texts are very, very difficult. And so the teacher needs to teach a variety of
strategies, including using graphic organizers and note taking skills.
So that the students can access the reading. The biology teacher absolutely has the responsibility
to scaffold discussions in biology using academic words and using the text. The biology teacher
absolutely has the responsibility of teaching any kind of writing associated with the biology.
So that might mean, for example, teaching that lab report or teaching students how to
conduct an experiment and write it up using inquiry.
I imagine there are also a lot of opportunities for teaching vocabulary in the content area.
Oh, it is.
And should that be a specific strategy?
Yes. And that's where content vocabulary should be taught. Content vocabulary in the high
school should be taught in the content class and reinforced in other classes, such as the
ESL class. The best place to teach the word photosynthesis is not in an ESL class. The
best place to teach it is in a biology class.
In context.
Absolutely. And so that the student really understands what photosynthesis is. Yes, you
can teach photosynthesis in an ESL classroom. But you're just going to be teaching the bare
basics, a very rudimentary knowledge. This is not academic language. So the content teacher
plays a key role in teaching ESL, ELD, English learners.
One group that presents teachers, all teachers, a number of challenges are students who are
newcomers. Who come to us at the secondary level. Often haven't had a lot of education
in their own country in their own language. And they have a short period of time before
they have to graduate from high school and get all the credits. What is the role of both
language teachers and content teachers in getting them to a level of having some academic
language?
We have a responsibility to our students, to all of our students, no matter when they
enter school, no matter what their educational backgrounds are, to teach academic language.
We have some excellent approaches and especially some good curricula materials available to
provide students with the intensive English language instruction that they need at the
secondary levels.
Students who arrive late in our system do need more instruction. We far underestimated
the amount of instruction in English that they acquired-that they need to acquire academic
language. So they might need to be in a three hour or four hour intensive language classroom
and then take some other classes in addition to that.
And it might be the case that they need to take summer school. They might need to go
before school, after school. If they need an extra year afterwards, our goal is to make
sure that they have acquired enough academic language so that they can go on and be successful
in the United States. And so I would say, yes. Give them more. Absolutely.
It seems to me that we often as educators of English language learners focus on that
group of students who just came in, the newcomers. But there's also another group of students
who are long-term ELLs, who have been in this country a long, long time, who have some of
the same gaps in language, in academic language.
I know on a day-to-day basis, you work with college students, you work with older students.
What are some of the challenges there? And what are some of the strategies? What can
educators do at that point?
Oh, thank you. This is the largest growing population that we have in the United States.
Our newcomers, especially at the secondary level, is rather small compared to this huge
group of students that we have. Instruction, instruction, instruction. Practice. But knowing
that it's practice perfect makes good practice, not just practicing. Students tend to acquire
the language of those with whom they associate. We all do.
And so our students, such as my student whose letter you read, came into the United States
and acquired the language of the friends with whom she associated. And she speaks a wonderful
variety of informal English. But as you noted, it won't do her very much in terms of getting
her ahead in academic settings.
So what we need to do is make sure that we get-that she attends to the language by using
dictation exercises, for example. By using both oral close, a sentence completion activity.
Or a written close activity where students fill in the blanks as we dictate a passage.
They need to summarize. We tell passages they need to write a lot with intensive feedback.
And yes, we know that they can achieve high levels of success. They can become bi-dialectal,
bi-lingual, multi-lingual.
For older students and for younger students, there must come a time when the support for
academic language needs to sort of pull back. The teacher needs to pull back. And they need
to become independent users of academic language. Does that happen magically? Or are there some
strategies?
A lot of our schools hope that that would happen. But we can't teach on hope. So what
we really need to do is plan very explicitly. Think about it as I do with my own child,
going onto college and beyond. You want to make sure that the child develops good learning
strategies that will help that child to continue to learn.
I want all English learners in the United States to know about learner dictionaries
and to use them. A learner dictionary is not just a dictionary that an individual has.
Tell me, because I don't know what a learner dictionary is.
They're wonderful dictionaries. Many different publishing companies have them. They're really
good. They tell a student what a word means. And then they give the students a lot of information
about the word. They give the students even grammatical and discourse information about
the word.
So they might say the word "discriminate" is used with the word "discriminate against
someone." And then they give sample sentences. So I tell all of my students, whether native
or not native, that they must have these dictionaries for English language learners. They're actually
written for students. They're very appropriate beginning at grade four and beyond.
So it's a teacher in your pocket sort of.
It's a teacher in your pocket. So they need that. They need to have self-editing skills.
So that's why if teachers begin correcting young children and children love corrective
feedback. They don't think it's wrong. They expect a teacher at age five and six.
They'll begin to give instructional feedback in the very young ages. And continue it. But
always with the goal of making the student a self-editor. So that the student, when the
student is finished with the ESL, ELD class, when he's in a mainstream class, the student
goes to them and says, okay.
I'm great in these aspects of language. And I'm not so good in these aspects. I'm going
to have to continue to work on subject/verb agreement. I know that I have a weakness in
word forms and related parts of speech. And I'm going to be correcting those.
Because, you know, our goal in schools is not to make people perfect native English
speakers. But we want to help people achieve a mastery over the English language as best
as they can get.
You know, we've talked a lot about what teachers can do to help students gain academic language.
And we often put it all on teachers. But what about other people in the educational system?
What about principals? What about school district personnel? What can they do to help here?
Thanks, Delia. It's so important that we get principals and vice principals, everybody
in the administration, to understand that it's not easy to teach academic language.
And students really need to have good curricular programs. They need to investigate the very
best curricular programs for teaching academic language.
So that the students have a coherent program for English language development. And we need
to get the principals in the classrooms to watch the teachers. So that they'll understand
how hard it is to teach academic language.
And to make sure that teachers get the appropriate support to teach academic language. We've
had three generations of teachers who really haven't had much instruction in grammar themselves
and can't tell the difference between a noun and a preposition.
Oh, dear.
And oftentimes, they're ashamed of that. There's no reason to be ashamed at all. That was just
the case of our public schools.
So what role does professional development play in all of this? Should administrators
be shaking professional development in a certain way?
Yes, they need to make sure that when teachers are teaching content, for example, they may
need to know how to scaffold the content to make sure that they're teaching language objectives.
And when I'm in classrooms and I'm watching teachers teach in Los Angeles or wherever
I am, I notice that what teachers are having the most difficulty with are language objectives,
identifying what language they can teach to help students access the content and participate
in the content instruction.
You know, teachers often talk about not having the time to plan together and collaborate
together. What ideas do you have for creating that space for teachers to collaborate around
common academic language targets?
Yes. Thank you. Teachers do need the time. It takes time. It takes them time to learn
the language themselves. To teach students and the strategies. And so they need to have
lesson planning time in which they come together to talk about the curriculum for English language
development.
So that they work together as teams with their ESL, ELD coaches, with the reading specialists,
the reading coaches, with the administration, with all the specialists in the schools. So
that they give students more of a seamless education. And they get everybody on the same
train going in the same direction.
I feel like we've just scratched the surface. What are some other resources you can tell
us about quickly before we wind up that teachers could use or turn to in developing academic
language?
Yes, thank you. If you go into our websites, and I'll leave you a list of our websites,
you'll find that we have developed many websites for helping teachers develop grammar, vocabulary,
a discourse of English language for helping students correct their own writing and for
developing their grammar and vocabulary.
We also have useful websites where teachers can have the most recent sort of cutting edge
research on what works for teaching English language learners.
We will certainly put a list of those up on the website. But is there one right now that
you could tell us about as an example, a website, that's good for teachers to go to?
Yes, the "What Works" website is an excellent place. Because it gives very useful information
about the types of strategies that are research based, that have been tried and tested with
English language learners. And it demonstrates some of those for teachers as well.
Are there misconceptions out there about academic language that you feel that we need to address?
Oh, yes.
Give us a few.
Oh, yes. There's one misconception is that it takes students so many years to acquire
academic language. Maybe seven or twelve or ten. It can take students forever or never
to acquire it if they don't get exposure to academic language, lots of practice in using
academic language and instruction in using academic language, including instructional
feedback.
So the amount of time is going to really vary greatly depending on how much instruction
that they get in academic language. Another myth is that we can teach academic language
in an ESL or an ELD class and then students don't need any afterwards. That is a complete
myth.
Students, all of us, including me, need instruction to improve academic language development after
they left the ESL, ELD class. Or after they left their English classroom. Everybody is
in the process of acquiring academic language and improving upon it. Including me.
That's a good way to put it.
And we need to continually be working on it with support. Now, what happens if you don't
get those supports or if you stop working on it? Your language tends to plateau. And
so that's why we need these continual supports.
One other myth is that academic language is easy to assess. Not so. It's very poorly defined
for assessment purposes. Research is just beginning to develop that will help us identify
the features of academic language that are accessible at the various proficiency levels.
So we're in the experimental stages. So a test of academic language is necessarily going
to be experimental at this point.
So right now when we get test scores back on proficiency, we've got a slice of what
students do academically.
Absolutely.
And we need to do some more work around that.
Absolutely.
You have been in this field so long and you've done so much. And it was just fascinating
talking to you today. Would you like to leave us with some thoughts? Have you some thoughts
today? A final thought perhaps.
Yes. If you looked at Vaughn's letter, my student, who came into the United States at
age five, and you can see her tremendous improvement with instruction at the end of a year. Now,
it might take some students three years, four years, five years, a lot of instruction to
acquire academic language.
It's highly teachable. Our students are extraordinarily bright. We're talking about one of the hardest
working groups of students in the United States who have achieved great heights academically.
We need to support them by teaching them academic English.
Thank you for that insight. That is I think a valuable one for all of us. And thank you
for sharing all your knowledge with us today.
It's been such a pleasure to talk to you.
And thank you all for joining us for this Colorín Colorado webcast.
For more information about the literacy of the young English language learners in your
life, please visit us on the web at www.colorincolorado.org. Again thank you for joining us. And take care.
Funding for this for this Colorin Colorado webcast is provided by the American Federation
of Teachers with additional support from the National Council of La Raza.
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