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Academic Language

Academic language, or the language of schooling, includes both general academic words and discipline specific academic words necessary to succeed in the lesson task (Nagy & Townsend, 2012). Zweirs (2008) defines academic language as "the set of words, grammar, and organizational strategies used to describe complex ideas, higher order thinking processes, and abstract concepts" (p. 20). Academic Language is the means by which an educator knows if a student can communicate to met the goals or objectives for the lesson.

It is important for educators to keep in mind that academic language is both receptive (seen/heard) and productive (spoken/read). Receptive and productive descriptions of language are also called language modalities. The acronym SWRL ("swirl") helps in remembering to consider each of the language modalities needed for learner success; SWRL stands for Speaking, Writing, Reading and Listening. It is beneficial for candidates to consider all language modalities when thinking about how learners will be asked to meet the lesson's content goal or objective (Goldenberg, 2013; Vogt, Echevarria, & Short, 2010).

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"Bricks, Mortar, and Buildings" is a nine-minute video that presents a metaphor for academic language by the same title (Benegas & Stolpestad, 2019). This metaphor will also be used to assist in identifying the academic language needs of your instructional sequence and learning goals. Determining the academic language demands related to the lesson objective is a very important step in planning for the success for all learners.

Multilingual Learners

Building candidate awareness of academic language is important for the support and success of all learners, but is of crucial importance for multilingual learners. Multilingual learners refer to all children and youth who are, or have been, consistently exposed to multiple languages. It includes learners known as English language learners (ELLs) or dual language learners (DLLs); heritage language learners; and students who speak varieties of English or indigenous languages. Ensuring that academic (English) language is clear helps students be successful with lesson activities and objectives, thereby increasing overall student achievement.

WIDA, a non-profit language and educational research consortium, shares this a summary of guiding principles which are important to keep in mind regarding academic language development:

Multilingual learners can use their languages as an asset; Languages Other Than English (LOTE) can be utilized in teaching academic language.

• Multilingual learners’ languages and cultures are valuable resources to be leveraged for schooling and classroom life; leveraging these assets and challenging biases help develop multilingual learners’ independence and encourage their agency in learning (Little, Dam, & Legenhausen, 2017; Moll, Amanti, Neff, & González, 1992; Nieto & Bode, 2018; Perley, 2011).
• Multilingual learners’ development of multiple languages enhances their knowledge and cultural bases, their intellectual capacities, and their flexibility in language use (Arellano, Liu, Stoker, & Slama, 2018; Escamilla, Hopewell, Butvilofsky, Sparrow, Soltero-González, Ruiz-Figueroa, & Escamilla, 2013; Genesee, n.d.; Potowski, 2007).
• Multilingual learners use their full linguistic repertoire, including translanguaging practices, to enrich their language development and learning (García, Johnson, & Seltzer, 2017; Hornberger & Link, 2012; Wei, 2018).

Multilingual learners connect new academic language to their prior linguistic and experiential knowledge.

• Multilingual learners use and develop language when opportunities for learning take into account their individual experiences, characteristics, abilities, and levels of language proficiency (Gibbons, 2002; Swain, Kinnear, & Steinman, 2015; TESOL International Association, 2018; Vygotsky, 1978).
• Multilingual learners use and develop language through activities which intentionally integrate multiple modalities, including oral, written, visual, and kinesthetic modes of communication (Choi & Yi, 2015; Jewitt, 2008; van Lier, 2006; Zwiers & Crawford, 2011).
• Multilingual learners use and develop language to interpret and access information, ideas, and concepts from a variety of sources, including real-life objects, models, representations, and multimodal texts (Ajayl, 2009; Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; Jewitt, 2009; Kervin & Derewianka, 2011).

A full summary of WIDA's guiding principles, including supporting research, is available at: https://wida.wisc.edu/sites/default/files/resource/Guiding-Principles-of-Language-Development.pdf or by clicking on the PDF embedded here for your convenience: 

It is also helpful to remember that language acquisition is an individual process that occurs over time, in different "stages." This four-minute video provides a quick review of the stages of language acquisition and their average timelines, as researched by behavioral linguists. It can help both learners and teachers to know how quickly an average student learning a new language might progress. Language acquisition is a complex process, and that there can be many variations due to individual factors and influences, including prior educational history and motivation.

Now, we will take a look at how we communicate and talk about academic language in instructional planning by further defining academic language and how to identify it in relationship to your lesson's learning goal and subject specific content.

Defining Academic Language

In the UNW School of Education Lesson Plan document, you will find prompts asking you to:

Identify the following language demands used to accomplish the objective(s) of the lesson:

Function:

Form:

Syntax:

Discourse:

Let's take a closer look at what each of those prompts are asking you to identify to help clarify what academic language is needed for your learners to be able to accomplish their lesson objective(s). Then we can consider what additional scaffolds and supports are needed to support academic language success for all learners as well as multilingual learners with differing specific language proficiencies.

Language Demands

There are several concepts involving language that students are expected to understand and make use of in the lesson. These are demands of the student that are necessary for understanding content, participating in the lesson you will be teaching, and meeting the lesson objective. Language demands include function, form, syntax and discourse.

Here is a visual to help with conceptualizing the Types of Academic Language:

Image Removed

Students need explicit instruction in academic language in each of these areas in each discipline to understand content and express their understanding. 

Function

To learn and express understanding of content, students need to be taught the purpose or function of the language for the particular lesson task. Functions of language refer to what the language is used to perform. Often the function is a part of the lesson objective. The function most often indicates the purpose of the cognitive, communicative, and/or physical action.

When you think of ‘function’, think about the verb as often the function is expressed as a verb such as critique, examine, retell argue, and categorize. Other examples of function include the following, along with their associated or related functions (Benegas & Stopelstad, 2020); Academic language function words in bold are used by the EdTPA teacher assessment system (www.edtpa.com):

• Locate-- define, seek information, count, identify, indicate, match, name, point, recall, recite, repeat, reproduce, state, select, recall.

• Order—Categorize, organize, develop, discover, complete, process, outline, retell, order
• Describe— inform, explain, identify, report, retell, recount, reorder, represent, depict, paraphrase, summarize, conclude, prepare, convert, translate, generalize, extrapolate, narrate.
• Classify— arrange, organize, categorize, construct, create, generate, summarize, arrange, group
• Compare/Contrast— Describe (similarities and differences), distinguish, identify, recognize, separate, differentiate.
• Analyze— calculate, interpret, classify, categorize, predict, deduce, differentiate, examine, discriminate, distinguish, group, illustrate, infer, order, recognize, relate, transform
• Synthesize— Arrange, categorize, combine, compile, compose, construct, create, deduce, explain, formulate, generalize, generate, integrate, modify, organize, prepare, plan, produce, propose, rearrange, reconstruct, relate, reorganize, revise, solve, summarize.
• Justify— argue, persuade, discriminate, prove, deduce, document, support, question, validate, verify, debate, construct, persuade
• Infer-- predict, hypothesize, extrapolate, restate, summarize, reconstruct, synthesize, derive, deduce, explain, create, construct 
• Evaluate- argue, appraise, assess, compare,  conclude, consider, contrast, criticize, critique, decide, describe, determine, discriminate, grade, judge, justify, recommend, validate, verify, test, support, rate, rank, measure, interpret, relate, identify, explain, indicate, confirm.

Form

 Students also need to be taught and need to demonstrate use of forms of language. Forms are new words, (including content-specific vocabulary). When you think of form, think about words used to convey the message, words used to build or convey the concept, multiple meaning words, or words that will be important to understand the overall meaning of the text. You will need to identify these for (or with) students at the beginning, and throughout the lesson. Also, provide opportunities for students to use this vocabulary during the lesson to demonstrate their understanding of the vocabulary.  Though content area vocabulary lists are often long, identifying academic language forms informs instructional goals by narrowing down to 1-3 words, selected because of their great impact on communication and learning.

A commonly used metaphor for the academic language term "form" would be that of the bricks used to build a building or architectural structure, as discussed in the video "Bricks, Mortar, and Buildings". We can further extend the metaphor by imagining that these "bricks" are created by all the things that make up words. How do you make bricks? Well, you must combine clay and water within a frame or brick form before baking it. In a similar fashion, the building blocks of the term "form" in academic language include the sounds of words (phonology), the meaning of words (semantics), and the parts of words (morphology).

Working alone or with a partner, take a moment to reflect on an example for each that would connect to your instructional goals. You can use this equation as a frame to help you focus on the reasons why these particular forms are terms that some students need explicitly taught in order to be successful in your content area:

•  Form: Phonology (word sounds) = _______________________________ (commonly misheard word from your content area; includes misspelled words)
•  Form: Semantics (word meaning) = ______________________________ (commonly misapplied or misunderstood word from your content area)
•  Form: Morphology (word parts) = ______________________________ (a commonly incorrect prefix, suffix, or root word part from your content area)

Syntax

Syntax refers to structure of words, phrases and sentences. When you think about syntax, think about sentence structure and length, transitions and connectives such as ‘because’ and ‘however’. Syntax also include a myriad of grammatical constructs and elements, including but not limited to verb tenses, passive voice, pronoun references, order of words in sentences, conventions of print, and musical, mathematical, and scientific notations. Consider how syntax may affect students’ understanding and communication of important content and concepts through analyzing how students will SWRL throughout your intended instructional sequence. 

To continue our metaphor from above, syntax would be like the mortar of a construction project. It is the cement, or glue, that holds the bricks in place so that the structure can begun to be built. We can think of the mortar much like the grammar that holds our language together so that we can communicate our thoughts and ideas.

For practice, think of a phrase or sentence that you would like your students to be able to understand or produce that relates to your lesson objective or content area and share it here:

•  _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Now, complete the following objective using the provided sentence frame to demonstrate your skills and celebrate your syntax!

•  I can identify the syntax related to my content area using ______________________________________________ (name a language structure used above), such as ___________________________________________________________ (your example of this structure) with the support of this sentence frame and lesson plan handbook guided notes. 

Note that in the above example objective frame, the underlined form "identify" communicates the academic language function and the phrase "this sentence frame and guided notes" communicates the supports or tools provided to assist in developing language use and understanding. An example of completing the above syntax might be: "I can identify the syntax related to my content area using grammatical terminology, such as 'phrases' with the support of this sentence frame and lesson plan handbook guided notes."

This exercise does illustrate how providing a support such as a sentence frame can extend syntax, but more importantly first illustrates that the instructor needs to reflectively think through and describe the academic language that is necessary to meet demands of the lesson objective.

Discourse

Discourse is the broadest of the four language demands. Discourse refers to how we talk in our specific disciplines. To engage in the discourse of the discipline, students need to know the terminology and way of speaking in the discipline in order to be successful. We also use a different discourse when we speak in reading class than we do in social studies or music class. Did you know that nonverbal gestures are even a part of discourse-specific language? Discourse describes a more holistic view of the academic language for communication that is required, or the largest conceptual segments of language.

When trying to define the needed holistic language to complete an academic task, it is helpful to think about the text types and genre labels given to different types of discourses. There are many ways to classify discourse. There is both written and spoken discourse. There is also monologic (produced by one speaker or writer), dialogic (produced by two speakers or writers), and multi-party (with three or more contributors). The types of discourse used can be classified according to communicative purpose, style, intended audience and formality within the given text or genre. Taken together, these classifications acknowledge that different language is typically used for a poem, a science lab report, an organized tutorial video, a persuasive essay, an orchestral piece, an artist's biography, or a small group discussion. Preparing students to recognize and engage in appropriate use of discourse will help them be successful in the lesson. 

Relative to further classifying the formality of discourse students will need which is typical of academic language, we must also consider "register" and helping students "switch registers" to meet the language goals. Register is the linguistic term meaning that we use different discourse patterns when we speak or write to different groups or contexts. For example, we speak differently when talking casually with friends than we do when giving a formal presentation. We also speak differently when we summarize than when we debate. We can explicitly teach students what discourse type, genre, or register is needed to communicate in the given context.

Extending our architectural metaphor yet again, discourse would be like the building that is created. Just as there as many distinct types of buildings, there are many distinct types of discourses. Imagine that your subject-specific content is filled with buildings of various shapes and sizes that relate to the prevalence of specific discourses used most often in your field of study to interact, learn, and complete projects or tasks.

Rather than list all the possible types that exist, it is potentially more helpful to identify discourse that is most often used within your content area major. Label the "buildings" below with 4 types of discourse that are used most often to communicate in your subject-specific area, related to the language domains (SWRL). The first one is done for you, but feel free to think of your own example as well.

             Image Removed                                 Image Removed                             Image Removed                                Image Removed

                   Speaking Discourse:                     Writing Discourse:                       Reading Discourse:                      Listening Discourse: 

Example: _informal partner discussion__            _________________________              _________________________              ___________________________

Identifying Academic Language Demands

Prior to creating the academic language goals, it's important to take an inventory of the language demands of the lesson. Your UNW lesson plan form can guide you through thinking about the function, forms, syntax, and discourse your students will use or, in other words, the SWRL language domains needed relative to your particular context and learning goal. 

Academic language must be planned for and taught during the lesson. This includes having students demonstrate use of the academic language within the lesson sequence, with opportunities for evaluation and feedback. Function, form, syntax, and discourse work together to achieve communication for the purposes of meeting the content learning objective. 

 Building candidate awareness of academic language is important for the support and success of all learners, but is of crucial importance for multilingual learners.

Now, we will take a look at how we communicate and talk about academic language in instructional planning by further defining academic language and how to identify it in relationship to your lesson's learning goal and subject specific content.

Defining Academic Language

In the UNW School of Education Lesson Plan document, you will find prompts asking you to:

Identify the following language demands used to accomplish the objective(s) of the lesson:

Function:

Form:

Syntax:

Discourse:

Let's take a closer look at what each of those prompts are asking you to identify to help clarify what academic language is needed for your learners to be able to accomplish their lesson objective(s). Then we can consider what additional scaffolds and supports are needed to support academic language success for all learners as well as multilingual learners with differing specific language proficiencies.

Language Demands

There are several concepts involving language that students are expected to understand and make use of in the lesson. These are demands of the student that are necessary for understanding content, participating in the lesson you will be teaching, and meeting the lesson objective. Language demands include function, form, syntax and discourse.

Here is a visual to help with defining the Types of Academic Language, where:

a) function = reason or purpose for communication,

b) form  = word/phrase vocabulary,

c) syntax = sentence level, and

d) discourse = linguistic complexity (type, context, and amount):

Image Added

Students need explicit instruction in academic language in each of these areas in each discipline to understand content and express their understanding. 

Academic Language: A Helpful Metaphor

"Bricks, Mortar, and Buildings" is a nine-minute video that presents a metaphor for academic language by the same title (Benegas & Stolpestad, 2019). This metaphor will also be used to assist in identifying the academic language needs of your instructional sequence and learning goals. Determining the academic language demands related to the lesson objective is a very important step in planning for the success for all learners.

Additionally, "Building with Bricks and Mortar" can be a strategy used to clearly orientate students to the academic language needed for success in meeting the instructional learning objective. The linked "Building with Bricks and Mortor" (7 min) on-line instructional video demonstrates how this same metaphor could be adapted for use in multiple contexts to identify and communicate the needed academic language for the instructional goal in a student-friendly way.

 Image AddedFunction = Purpose for Communication

To learn and express understanding of content, students need to be taught the purpose or function of the language for the particular lesson task. Functions of language refer to what the language is used to perform. Often the function is a part of the lesson objective. The function most often indicates the purpose of the cognitive, communicative, and/or physical action. A function is often the verb found in the objective statement; it is ONE WORD.

When you think of ‘function’, think about the verb as often the function is expressed as a verb such as critique, examine, retell argue, and categorize. Other examples of function include the following, along with their associated or related functions (Benegas & Stopelstad, 2020); Academic language function words in bold are used by the EdTPA teacher assessment system (www.edtpa.com):

• Locate-- define, seek information, count, identify, indicate, match, name, point, recall, recite, repeat, reproduce, state, select, recall.

• Order—Categorize, organize, develop, discover, complete, process, outline, retell, order
• Describe— inform, explain, identify, report, retell, recount, reorder, represent, depict, paraphrase, summarize, conclude, prepare, convert, translate, generalize, extrapolate, narrate.
• Classify— arrange, organize, categorize, construct, create, generate, summarize, arrange, group
• Compare/Contrast— Describe (similarities and differences), distinguish, identify, recognize, separate, differentiate.
• Analyze— calculate, interpret, classify, categorize, predict, deduce, differentiate, examine, discriminate, distinguish, group, illustrate, infer, order, recognize, relate, transform
• Synthesize— Arrange, categorize, combine, compile, compose, construct, create, deduce, explain, formulate, generalize, generate, integrate, modify, organize, prepare, plan, produce, propose, rearrange, reconstruct, relate, reorganize, revise, solve, summarize.
• Justify— argue, persuade, discriminate, prove, deduce, document, support, question, validate, verify, debate, construct, persuade
• Infer-- predict, hypothesize, extrapolate, restate, summarize, reconstruct, synthesize, derive, deduce, explain, create, construct 
• Evaluate- argue, appraise, assess, compare,  conclude, consider, contrast, criticize, critique, decide, describe, determine, discriminate, grade, judge, justify, recommend, validate, verify, test, support, rate, rank, measure, interpret, relate, identify, explain, indicate, confirm.

Form= Bricks Image Added

 Students also need to be taught and need to demonstrate use of forms of language. Forms are new words, (including content-specific vocabulary). When you think of form, think about words used to convey the message, words used to build or convey the concept, multiple meaning words, or words that will be important to understand the overall meaning of the text. You will need to identify these for (or with) students at the beginning, and throughout the lesson. Also, provide opportunities for students to use this vocabulary during the lesson to demonstrate their understanding of the vocabulary.  Though content area vocabulary lists are often long, identifying academic language forms informs instructional goals by narrowing down to 1-3 words, selected because of their great impact on communication and learning.

Syntax = Mortar  Image Added

Syntax refers to structure of words, phrases and sentences. When you think about syntax, think about sentence structure and length, transitions and connectives such as ‘because’ and ‘however’. Syntax also include a myriad of grammatical constructs and elements, including but not limited to verb tenses, passive voice, pronoun references, order of words in sentences, conventions of print, and musical, mathematical, and scientific notations. Consider how syntax may affect students’ understanding and communication of important content and concepts through analyzing how students will SWRL throughout your intended instructional sequence. 

Image AddedDiscourse = Buildings

Discourse is the broadest of the four language demands. Discourse refers to how we talk in our specific disciplines. To engage in the discourse of the discipline, students need to know the terminology and way of speaking in the discipline in order to be successful. We also use a different discourse when we speak in reading class than we do in social studies or music class. Did you know that nonverbal gestures are even a part of discourse-specific language? Discourse describes a more holistic view of the academic language for communication that is required, or the largest conceptual segments of language.

When trying to define the needed holistic language to complete an academic task, it is helpful to think about the text types and genre labels given to different types of discourses. There are many ways to classify discourse. There is both written and spoken discourse. There is also monologic (produced by one speaker or writer), dialogic (produced by two speakers or writers), and multi-party (with three or more contributors). The types of discourse used can be classified according to communicative purpose, style, intended audience and formality within the given text or genre. Taken together, these classifications acknowledge that different language is typically used for a poem, a science lab report, an organized tutorial video, a persuasive essay, an orchestral piece, an artist's biography, or a small group discussion. Preparing students to recognize and engage in appropriate use of discourse will help them be successful in the lesson. 

Relative to further classifying the formality of discourse students will need which is typical of academic language, we must also consider "register" and helping students "switch registers" to meet the language goals. Register is the linguistic term meaning that we use different discourse patterns when we speak or write to different groups or contexts. For example, we speak differently when talking casually with friends than we do when giving a formal presentation. We also speak differently when we summarize than when we debate. We can explicitly teach students what discourse type, genre, or register is needed to communicate in the given context.

Identifying Academic Language Demands

Prior to creating the academic language goals, it's important to take an inventory of the language demands of the lesson. Your UNW lesson plan form can guide you through thinking about the function, forms, syntax, and discourse your students will use or, in other words, the SWRL language domains needed relative to your particular context and learning goal. 

Academic language must be planned for and taught during the lesson. This includes having students demonstrate use of the academic language within the lesson sequence, with opportunities for evaluation and feedback. Function, form, syntax, and discourse work together to achieve communication for the purposes of meeting the content learning objective. 

Example 1: VisualExplanation of Process for Identifying Academic Language Based on Central Focus and Alignment:

• Develop a Clear Objective: State content K-12 Standards in each discipline area are very helpful for clarifying the lesson's Central Focus. That said, it is not necessary to start with a state standard in mind when writing your objective, but it is wise to locate which of the content standards for this specific grade level and content area align with your intended objective and lesson goals before attempting to analyze the academic language needed for success. Here, you can see that this example uses the state Science standards for elementary students in grade 4.  Reflect on how the state standards (4.1.2.2 and 4.2.2.2) align with the stated learning goal, objective, and student-friendly "I can..." statement.

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• Identify a Language Focus: Consider how learners will demonstrate success in meeting the lesson objective. Use the action verb in the SWBAT statement for the "function" prompt (ONE WORD), and then consider what a student meeting that function would understand (receptive modalities: Listening, Reading) or produce (productive modalities: Speaking, Writing). In this example, EXPLAIN is the action verb in the objective and the function word in the academic language. To EXPLAIN correctly and meet this assignment objective, a student would need to use the identified forms, syntax, and discourse identified below: 

Image Added

• Extension: What Scaffolds are Needed? After an analysis of what learners "can do" at each proficiency level, then, leads to the identification of what scaffolds and supports are needed to differentiate for the learners with multilingual and multicultural considerations, identified above in response to prompt 4a) in the Context for Learning. (See SOE Lesson Plan Handbook section for further details about prompts 4a and 4b, linked for your convenience here). Here is an example of scaffolds and supports that would help to support multilingual learners in meeting this objective based on the identified Academic Language above:

Image Added

Example 2: Narrative Explanation of Process for Identifying Academic Language Based on Central Focus and Alignment:

When identifying the academic language demands and supports related to an objective, a teacher may think reflectively through many inter-related aspects of lesson planning. In the box below is an example of this type reflective thinking. Note- this is in narrated form, NOT what you would write or script out within your lesson plan document. There are example responses to the lesson plan form prompts available in 6.5 Appendix E - Identifying Academic Language. 

Academic Language Scaffolds and Supports

Explicit supports must be provided within the lesson to support the academic language of all students, including to meet the specific needs of students at differing academic language proficiency levels. Based on your analysis of your academic language needs and your instructional context, you may elect to utilize one of more research-backed supports to enhance explicit instruction in order to address the following prompt in your UNW School of Education lesson plan document:

What additional scaffolds and supports are needed to support academic language success for these learners?

Tools, strategies, and practices to support academic language development include, but are not limited to:

...

With the visual model to help organize relevant information, the above frames would notably extend or enhance the syntax of learners who need to orally report their findings to a peer with appropriate transition words based on subject-specific content. An appropriate challenge might be to see if students could use all three or perhaps create their own comparison or contrast statement based on their analysisstatement based on their analysis. Additionally, you can refer to the example in the box above for a more holistic example of how the selected supports of academic language development could be inter-related within the learning context and goals.

More language support tools and examples specific steps to differentiating for your multilingual learners are located within this handbook in  in  6.5 Appendix E - Identifying Academic Language Objective. Included in Appendix E are 6.5a Academic Language: How to Support Multilingual Learners are further instructions on how to understand the language proficiency levels of your multilingual learners and use that information to inform your selection of instructional supports to meet the needs of each individual. . Included in 6.5b Academic Language: WIDA Resources for Teaching Multilingual Learners are tools to inform your understanding of what multilingual learners "can do" at each specific language proficiency level.

A Summary of How to Determine Academic Language Objectives:

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