Planning for Academic LanguageLanguage Objectives

Why?How?

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Why is academic language so important?

• Students who master academic language are more likely to:– be successful in academic and professional settings

• Students who do not learn language may:– struggle academically – be at a higher risk of dropping out of school

Let’s first begin by thinking about the language of school.

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What is academic language?Academic language is:

– the language used in the classroom and workplace.– the language of text.– the language of assessments.– the language of academic success.– the language of power.

It is the language our students need

to access.

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Try This..1. Think about your best friend.2. How would you describe him or her to a colleague? Take a moment to think this through..

3. Now think about the 911 tragedy and describe the events that occurred that day to a colleague.

Would you use different words? Would your sentence structure change?

You probably use more “formal” language and you were careful in the way you phrased the events. Yes. your register changed, your tenor, field and mode and

audience.

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Social Language vs. Academic Language

• When using social, or informal, English in daily conversation, it’s possible to communicate by using slang and without using English in a grammatically correct way.

• You can be understood without using:– articles– prepositions– sophisticated vocabulary– pronoun reference

Our students still need social

language as a bridge to academic

language.

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Recognizing Social vs. Academic Language

Informal Formal

Repetition of words

Sentences start with “and “but”

Use of slang, “guy, “cool “and “awesome”

Variety of words, more sophisticated vocabulary

Sentences start with transition words, such as “however”, moreover,” and “in addition”

No slang Do you feel that

we need to explicitly explain these differences to our students?

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Academic Language

The language needed by students to do the work in schools. It includes, for example, discipline-specific

vocabulary, grammar and punctuation, and applications of rhetorical conventions and devices that are typical

for a content area (e.g., essays, lab reports, discussions of a controversial issue).

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What we know.

• “Students must learn how to think, act, believe, speak, listen, read and write in a way that is expected in school” , Freedman and Freedman (2009)

• So we recognize that academic language needs to be embedded into our content areas.

How do we plan strategically for this in our content areas?

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Language Objectives

Specify the language that students need to understand academic content and to further demonstrate that understanding.

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Writing a Language Objective

1. What is the language your English Language Learner needs to process or produce to demonstrate their learning?

2. Content Objectives : What?

3. Language Objective : How?.

4. How will you provide the opportunity to practice the language? (Support)

Ask yourself.

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• We think about the functions of language: How will the language be used?

• Will the students, ask questions, compare and contrast, explain etc.?

• What are some of the forms of language students will use when using a particular type of function; content vocabulary, grammatical structures etc.?

When we think of language.

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Language Functions and Forms

How will the student use the language? (Function )

Domain: speaking, listening, reading or writing

What grammatical structures and vocabulary of the language will be used? (Forms)

Compare and ContrastRetellAnalyzePersuadeSynthesisInferDescribeExplainSequence

Syntax and sentence structureAcademic vocabularyGrammatical features (parts of speech, tense and mood, subject/verb agreement, adjectives, adverbs etc.)

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Writing a Language Objective

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Sentence stems to support intentional language development

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Writing a Language Objective

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Sentence stems to support intentional language development

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Students will identify with labels the parts of the water cycle by using evaporation, condensation, and precipitation on a diagram.

Function

Form Support

Content Objective: The student will understand the parts of the water cycle.

Domain

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Functions for Language Objectives: This list can help you write great Language Objectives for each language domain.

Listening Speaking Reading Writing

Act, arrange, distinguish, duplicate, categorize, choose, copy, follow directions, identify, indicate, label, listen, match, order, point, recognize, role play, show, sort, tell

Agree/disagree, answer, ask, converse, debate, define, describe, discuss, explain, express, give instructions, identify, name, practice, predict, pronounce, rehearse, repeat, rephrase, respond, restate, say steps in a process, share, state, summarize, tell, use vocabulary

Discover, distinguish, explore, find, find specific info, identity, infer, interpret, locate, make connections, match preview, predict, read, read aloud, skim

Ask and answer, questions, brainstorm, classify, collect, compare, contrast, create, describe, edit, evaluate, explain, illustrate, journal, label, list, order, organize, record, revise, state and justify, opinions, summarize, support, take notes, write

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Types of Supports Sensory Supports Visual Supports Group Supports

• Real-life objects (realia)

• Manipulatives• Pictures &

photographs• Illustrations,

diagrams & drawings

• Magazines & newspapers

• Physical activities• Videos & films• Broadcasts• Models & figures

• Charts• Graphic

organizers• Tables• Graphs• Timelines• Number lines

• In pairs or partners

• In triads or small groups

• In a whole group• Using cooperative

groupstructures• With the Internet

(Websites) or software programs

• In the native language (L1)

• With mentors

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Try this…..

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Supports

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A thought..It is not just words that our

kids need to learn,

but how to articulate those words, read and understand them, and use them in their writing.

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