Ell Instruction in All Content Areas: Academic Vocabulary and Oral Language

2. Academic Vocabulary and Oral Language

Therefore, on a regular basis, teachers across disciplines should explicitly teach content-specific vocabulary as well as academic vocabulary that may be used across disciplines (Calderón, 2007).

Some publishers such as National Geographic provide units with coordinated books at different levels. Newsela.com is another free resource that levels current news items on-demand. Alternatively, a teacher could adapt sentences and vocabulary to the extent necessary while still being authentic to the content. Teachers should also illustrate the differences representative of writing in their subject area. For instance, writing a lab report in science requires a different format and style than a narrative essay in language arts.

Pair work is a very effective organization strategy that enables peers to assist each other (Gersten et al., 2007). For example, instead of a teacher directing students to take turns reading aloud as a class, each student has many more opportunities to practice reading when paired with a partner. In addition to dramatically increasing the practice time, paired reading improves motivation and accountability (Calderón, 2007). According to some research, students of varied language proficiencies can be grouped together (Gersten et al., 2007). According to other researchers, students should be paired carefully so that high and low level English students are not paired together. Rather, teachers should pair high level students with medium level students or medium level students with low level students (Kinsella, 2008). In addition to collaborating with classmates, students should have the opportunity for independent practice, processing, and reflection on their own learning.

Academic Vocabulary and Oral Language

Gersten et al. (2007) recommend that teachers develop students’ academic language to promote their success in literacy and English language acquisition. “Academic language refers to the decontextualized, cognitively challenging language used not only in school, but also in business, politics, science, and journalism, and so forth. In the classroom, it means the ability to understand story problems, write book reports, and read complex ... texts” (Crawford & Krashen, 2007, p. 17). In writing, academic language is necessary to be able to construct topic sentences, use transitions effectively, and edit (Gersten et al, 2007). Furthermore, academic language acquisition involves more than just the understanding of content area vocabulary. It includes cognitively challenging skills such as explaining, comparing, contrasting, classifying, reporting, synthesizing, evaluating, and inferring. Academic language tasks occur in a context different from students’ familial context, especially as grade level increases. According to Verplaetse and Migliacci, “Academic language as compared to social, interpersonal language treats the speaker and receiver as if they are distanced from one another; it has been called the language of strangers ... It assumes a lack of shared history, it limits opportunities for negotiation of meaning, and it uses words rather than visuals to convey most of its meaning” (2008, p. 128). To further complicate matters, new ideas and concepts are presented to the students through the decontextualized language.

One way to help students access academic vocabulary is to teach strategies such as guessing a word’s meaning from the context or using word prefixes, roots, and suffixes to help arrive at a word’s meaning (Nation & Waring, 1997).

To assist students in expressing themselves in an academic context, the teachers can provide sentence starters that incorporate academic vocabulary. The sentence starters should be used for writing and also for oral language, to provide multiple opportunities for reinforcing the new vocabulary (Kinsella, 2008). In addition, teachers should model grammatical structures that allow students to complete the sentence starters appropriately. If the teachers have knowledge of grammar, they can explain the form required. For example, in a sentence that starts, “To combat global warming, the President should…,” a teacher can point out that the verb the students should use needs to be in the base or infinitive form without “to”. The students will benefit from instruction in the following academic language tasks: expressing an opinion, asking for clarification, soliciting a response, reporting a group’s or partner’s idea, disagreeing, affirming, predicting, paraphrasing, acknowledging ideas, offering a suggestion, or holding the floor (Kinsella, 2008). Students’ ability to acquire and use academic vocabulary will directly affect their success in expressing themselves and accessing and analyzing text. Other options include creating a “shared history” by incorporating visuals, real objects, gestures, and occasions for students to clarify meaning (Verplaetse & Migliacci, 2008).

In terms of accessing teachers’ spoken academic language, the research is divided. Some researchers support teachers making content comprehensible by speaking at a slower pace or with exaggerated enunciation (Reyes & Vallone, 2008). In addition, they suggest that teachers adjust their spoken language by using simpler vocabulary words or grammatically uncomplicated sentences that match or are slightly higher than students’ ability to comprehend oral language (Reyes & Vallone, 2008). Other teacher educators recommend that teachers should maintain an authentic pace and tone, but increase the number of pauses in their spoken language to allow time for comprehension (Verplaetse & Migliacci, 2008). At the same time, other researchers believe that simplifying or otherwise adapting language provides inadequate input for ELLs (Walqui & DeFazio, 2003). Gersten et al. agree, stating, “the problem with regularly giving English learners a diet of familiar reading material is that the academic texts of assessments and most content areas remain unfamiliar” (2007, p. 19).

Teachers should explain to their students that native language(s) can be used in the classroom. For example, students might use their native languages to demonstrate what they know. If the teacher doesn’t speak the student’s language, often there is another student from the same language background who may be able to translate.

In order for vocabulary instruction to be effective, words should be taught in context with sufficient time for rehearsal. A student is much less likely to remember a list of arbitrary vocabulary words than words that are taken from a chapter that they are reading, writing about and discussing in class. In learning a new word, a student must hear it, say it, be able to use it in a sentence, and notice something about it (i.e., prefix, cognate, part of speech, etc.). Repetition is essential, but always should be contextualized in meaningful ways. Because these words are pulled from the current unit, they will tend to be recycled and repeated naturally.

Most content teachers will be teaching advanced words, which are often concepts that are bolded in a textbook and link directly to the content standard (i.e., mitosis). However, ELLs often cannot access the content words because they need explicit instruction in other vocabulary. What further complicates the issue is that the supporting words often have homophones or different meanings across disciplines (Calderón, 2007). For example, consider the meaning of radical in math versus history or knowing the word sign and being confused when hearing sine in math class.

Ballantyne, K.G., Sanderman, A.R., Levy, J. (2008). Educating English language learners: Building teacher capacity. Washington, DC: National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition. Available at http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/practice/mainstream_teachers.htm.