69传媒

No one is a native speaker of academic English.

As the formal written and spoken language of classrooms and professional workplaces, academic English often bears little resemblance to the social, everyday language one needs to communicate effectively in most situations.

It encompasses precise vocabulary, complex grammatical structures, and sophisticated forms of discourse. For English-language learners, acquiring academic language is often the highest hurdle to clear before they can be deemed proficient in English and be able to fully engage in the kind of rich and rigorous content necessary to succeed later in college and a professional work life.

But now that public schools in nearly every state are diving headlong this school year into teaching the Common Core State Standards in English/language arts and literacy and mathematics, the demand for using more sophisticated language and practices such as analysis, persuasion, and comparison, to name just a few, is stronger than ever, educators and researchers say.

And it鈥檚 not just English-learners who may struggle with academic language. Many native English-speakers also fall short of grasping it because it鈥檚 not what they hear at home.

There are, of course, the more complex texts that all students are expected to read, analyze, and understand, with appropriate supports. There are the constructed responses that require students to use formal and content-specific language to answer questions verbally and in writing. There are the expectations that students, regardless of their proficiency level in the language, will be able to engage in formal debate and discourse and higher-level peer-to-peer discussions in their classrooms.

鈥淲ho is teaching them the language they need for these demands?鈥� said Katherine M. Kinsella, an adjunct education professor at San Francisco State University and a frequent consultant to districts and schools on instruction for English-learners. 鈥淚 think the average teacher is woefully underprepared for this.鈥�

But must academic language be explicitly taught to English-learners and other struggling students? While some educators say it鈥檚 always been necessary and is even more so with the common core, others believe it鈥檚 more important for teachers to change classroom practices that have focused for too long on making sure students are getting certain components of language correct, such as grammar and vocabulary. That approach, some experts say, discourages many language learners from engaging more with English, especially orally, for fear of being corrected.

Focus on Concept

Some English-learner experts reject the term 鈥渁cademic language.鈥�

鈥淩eally, what we are talking about are academic practices that embed language, things such as describing, comparing, and engaging in presenting ideas,鈥� said A铆da Walqui, the director of teacher professional development for WestEd, a San Francisco-based research group. Most teachers, she said, have a preoccupation with correcting students鈥� language when the attention should be first on whether students are grasping the conceptual language and academic skills.

鈥淎s soon as you put an emphasis on the language, then people start teaching grammar. The language gets chopped into pieces, and students don鈥檛 engage in it in a discourse form,鈥� she said.

But because so many of the readings required in the common standards are informational texts鈥攁 major shift, especially in the early grades鈥攎any students, and especially English-learners and struggling readers, may come to these nonfiction selections with language voids for teachers to fill.

And that is what has Ms. Kinsella worried鈥攚hether teachers themselves have enough command of the language of informational texts, to name one example, to effectively teach and support English-learners.

She conducted a seminar with elementary teachers in a California district in September on this very point. Using photocopies of a chapter from an informational text, Ms. Kinsella asked the teachers to label various features of the article, such as captions, sources, and legends on bar graphs.

鈥淢any of them couldn鈥檛 do it,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hey didn鈥檛 know the terms. They know 鈥榤ain idea鈥� and 鈥榙etails鈥� because those have been the big thing in kindergarten through 6th grade for so long.鈥�

The common core also calls for students to be able to cite evidence from the text, analyze it, and provide written and oral responses with sophisticated language. Providing such responses, Ms. Kinsella said, means students will need vocabulary and language that they may rarely hear a teacher use.

69传媒 need to hear and read phrases such as 鈥渂ased on鈥� or 鈥淚 concluded that鈥� and be given constant opportunities to use that language themselves with their classroom peers, she said.

鈥淲e鈥檝e engaged in real benign neglect with English-learners and those students who come from generational poverty and families with minimal educational experience,鈥� Ms. Kinsella said. 鈥淲e as a profession have not done a very organized, systematic job of helping these students鈥� progress to more formal ways of speaking and using advanced English.

Connecting the Dots

One of the biggest efforts to help teachers bridge those gaps as they begin using the common standards is the revamped version of English-language-proficiency standards shared by the 29 states in the World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment consortium. The consortium, better known as WIDA, revised its five English-language-development standards to clearly show the connections between the content standards of the common core across every grade level and the academic language that will be necessary to teach across the varying levels of English proficiency.

In 1st grade, for example, the common core calls for pupils to 鈥渨rite opinion pieces in which they introduce the topic or name the book they are writing about, state an opinion, supply a reason for the opinion, and provide some sense of closure.鈥�

The WIDA edition clearly spells out the grade-level vocabulary words and expressions that teachers should use鈥攕uch as 鈥渇act,鈥� 鈥減aragraph,鈥� 鈥渢opic sentence,鈥� 鈥渕ain idea,鈥� or 鈥渄etail"鈥攚hile teaching that writing standard to students at all levels of English development. The WIDA edition also offers example topics that are pulled directly from a content standard in the common core and provide teachers with the types of support and scaffolding of academic language that they need depending on students鈥� proficiency.

Guadalupe Vald茅s, an education professor at Stanford University who studies second-language acquisition, has a different take on academic language that stems from her view that language is not a set of structures that must be learned in a linear fashion.

She sees academic language as something that students, whether English-learners or not, acquire through exposure and experience in using a variety of language types in all settings.

Because the most common approach to teaching ELLs is to sequester them in classrooms with other language-learners and to focus so much on grammar and vocabulary, Ms. Vald茅s said they don鈥檛 get enough opportunities to hear and speak what she calls 鈥渞ich English鈥� with peers and other educators.

鈥淵ou鈥檝e got to let the kids play the game,鈥� Ms. Vald茅s said. 鈥淚f I want you to play basketball but I just keep you dribbling the ball the whole time without a chance to pass or shoot, you鈥檙e not likely to ever play the game very well. But if you get into the game, play it, and watch all that鈥檚 happening around you, you鈥檝e going to have a much better chance at playing the game well.鈥�