What are the Components of Academic Language?

Some students, including English learners or impoverished children, come to school not having the academic language at their fingertips to express their thinking. They have great things going on in their minds but don’t know how to show you what they’re thinking. They can’t find the words because they haven’t been taught how to express their thoughts verbally, in writing, or by demonstration. It’s just not something they’ve done or been taught.

As teachers, we must help students express their thinking by developing academic language, the language of school.

What is academic language?

“It is the language used in school to help students develop content knowledge and the language students are expected to use to convey their understanding of this knowledge.” California ELA/ELD Framework, p.41. This is one of the best definitions of academic language that I have seen in a long time. It holds the essence of academic language used in school to convey an understanding of knowledge. That is what we want our students to do: use language to convey understanding in school.

Academic language is the underpinning of learning. Through academic language, students read, write, listen, and speak about the topics they learn at school. Simply put, it is the language of school.

Components of Academic Language

The three main components of academic language are vocabulary, grammatical structures, and functions.  The components of academic language must be deliberately developed and taught. For most students, academic language cannot be learned through exposure within a classroom setting. Still, it must be explicitly taught, practiced, and applied to various content areas repeatedly throughout the year.

Vocabulary for Academic Language

When we look at vocabulary within the context of academic language, we focus on Tier 2 (general academic words) and Tier 3 (domain-specific) words.

Tier 1

Words occur frequently in everyday life. Depending on their background knowledge and grade level, some students may also need instruction in Tier 1 words.  Usually, kindergarteners will need some direct instruction in Tier 1 words, whereas, by second grade, most students will be familiar with those words unless they are new to English.  Tier 1 words would be taught during your Designated ELD time.

Tier 2

Words occur across various content areas, are characteristic of written texts, and occur less frequently in oral language.  Teach Tier 2 words during your Reading Language Arts time.  Depending on your students ‘ needs, you can also teach Tier 2 words during your Designated or Integrated ELD time.  The basic idea with the Tier 2 words is that you’re building general academic vocabulary that students can apply to various topics.

Tier 3

Words consist of vocabulary specific to certain domains or disciplines. They are subject-specific and highly specialized. You teach Tier 3 words during content area instruction as an elementary teacher.  Most all of your students will need direct instruction with Tier 3 words, so it’s not isolated to just your English learners.

Grammatical Structures for Academic Language

Grammatical structures are all the nuts and bolts that hold our sentences together. They are nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, verb tenses, conditional forms, questions, etc. Grammatical structures are also phrases, clauses, and sentences. It is the glue that binds our sentences. It’s the parts that you might have diagrammed in high school.

Vocabulary and Grammatical Structures work together to build language. Vocabulary by itself is just a bunch of words. Grammatical structures in isolation are boring and rote. Together, along with syntax, they make language beautiful and meaningful.

Syntax

Syntax is the arrangement of words and phrases used to create sentences. Students who have heard English their entire lives will have been exposed to countless iterations of words being put together to form different sentences. Even at five years old, they have the basic syntax of English in their back pocket.

Students from non-English-speaking families or who speak another language in the home have not heard the many ways words can be arranged and rearranged within a sentence.

With my own son at home (an English speaker), there are times that I’ll say something and he won’t understand it, so I’ll rephrase what I said and change the word order or some of the vocabulary. He has now heard the same thing two different ways.

How many of our students have the opportunity to listen and play with language like this before coming to school?

While the grammatical structures are the nuts and bolts of English and how language is put together, syntax is where we play with language, arrange, rearrange, and discover its flexibility.

Language Functions for Academics

Language functions are our purposes for using language. We use language for various purposes in social and academic settings and formal and informal contexts. Ask yourself, “What am I asking my students to do?”

Examples of academic language functions include:

• Compare and contrast
• Describe
• Identify cause and effect
• Ask Questions
• Summarize

The language function determines the grammatical forms. Each language function will have specific grammatical forms that are relevant to that function.

For instance, when comparing and contrasting, students will use grammatical forms, such as ___but___, ___whereas___, although ____, and Both ___ and ___.  Language functions and grammatical forms are generic and can be used across topics.

The topic determines the vocabulary, and vocabulary is specific to the topic.

All three of the above vocabulary, grammatical forms, and functions work together to form academic language (along with a few other components, like text structure, genre, and discourse). Understanding language functions, grammatical forms, and vocabulary will help you break apart language for your young learners and teach them how to build it back up.

See below for examples of how these three components work together in real classroom lessons.

Contextualized – Not Isolated

This is one of the key ideas that I see missed all the time in teaching academic language.

Context.

Language needs to be developed within a meaningful context.

Be sure that when you teach academic language explicitly, it’s within a context or a topic, not in isolation. Students will not remember how to use language taught in isolation. Language taught within an engaging topic gives students a reason to learn the new language (motivation) and many authentic opportunities to practice it (because they’re motivated).

Here are a few examples of how I have contextualized the explicit teaching of academic language:

• Cause and Effect with Soil Erosion
• Developing Academic Language with Familiar Content
• Opinion Writing
• Understand Fractions by Using Sentence Frames
• Whiteboard Fill-in Frames
• Get Students Talking with Mathematical Practice Discussion Cards
• Partition Rectangles Into Rows and Columns
• Multiplication Arrays

Here are a few scholarly references if you want some more reading:

• What Teachers Need to Know About Language
• English Language Development