BUILDING ACADEMIC LANGUAGE

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3 BUILDING ACADEMIC LANGUAGE

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5 BUILDING ACADEMIC LANGUAGE Meeting Common Core Standards Across Disciplines, Grades 5 12 Second Edition Jeff Zwiers

6 Cover design by Adrian Morgan Cover photograph Vjom Thinkstock Copyright 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved. Published by Jossey-Bass A Wiley Brand One Montgomery Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, , fax , or on the Web at Requests to the publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, , fax , or online at Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifi cally disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of pro fit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites offered as citations and/or sources for further information may have changed or disappeared between the time this was written and when it is read. Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at , outside the U.S. at , or fax Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at For more information about Wiley products, visit Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Zwiers, Jeff. Building academic language: meeting common core standards across disciplines, grades 5 12/Jeff Zwiers. Second edition. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN (pbk.) ISBN (ebk.) ISBN (ebk.) 1. Academic language Study and teaching. I. Title. P120.A24.Z dc Printed in the United States of America SECOND EDITION PB Printing

7 Contents Preface to the Second Edition ix 1 Understanding How Students Use Language 1 This chapter introduces foundational social and cultural perspectives of complex uses of languages in and out of school. It explores ways in which the Common Core State Standards provide new opportunities and challenges with respect to building academic language. These standards present new cognitive and literacy targets that can be reached only with heightened cultivation of academic language, the language used to describe complex ideas, abstract concepts, and critical thinking. 2 Language Skills Required by the Common Core State Standards 21 This chapter clarifies the functions and features of academic language with direct references to the Common Core State Standards. This includes academic grammar and discourse levels of language use. Science, math, and history teachers must teach the use of language beyond vocabulary knowledge, given that each discipline emphasizes different ways of thinking and communicating in complex ways. When students learn these ways of using language, they gain access to the codes and strategies that accelerate their disciplinary abilities and knowledge. 3 Cultivating Academic Language Acquisition 47 This chapter provides an overview of how students acquire language, along with key teacher habits and strategies for modeling and scaffolding its development across content areas. This chapter also helps us improve our own language use in classroom settings. v

8 4 Content-Area Variations of Academic Language 79 Given that not all disciplines are alike in their content, thinking, and ways of communicating, this chapter describes variations of language that correspond to the main content areas taught in schools: math, language arts, history, and science. This chapter addresses some of the shifts in instruction that have emerged in response to the Common Core State Standards. 5 Facilitating Whole-Class Discussions for Content and Language Development 113 The focus of this chapter is on making whole-class discussions more effective for building academic language, content knowledge, and thinking skills. The chapter starts with a rationale for using classroom talk in a variety of settings and offers tips for leading discussions in ways that deepen and extend student thinking, as opposed to just promoting the accumulation of facts. The chapter offers more effective alternatives to common questioning strategies and teacher-controlled formats such as initiation-response-feedback. The latter half of the chapter examines improving academic listening, engaging all students in whole-class communication activities, and building language through simulations and role plays. Examples of Common Core State Standards are used in the activities. 6 Academic Listening and Speaking in Small Groups and Pairs 151 Building oral academic language, content knowledge, and thinking skills in pairs and small groups is important. This chapter offers ideas for supporting small group and pair discussions in ways that deepen and extend student thinking, as well as create ideas, as opposed to just regurgitating someone else s knowledge. Examples of Common Core State Standards are used in the activities. 7 Language for Reading Complex Texts 183 This chapter looks at the language of reading, emphasizing the learning of language skills beyond vocabulary to help in comprehending difficult texts, as outlined by the Common Core State Standards. It also includes a section on teaching content area and general academic vocabulary in context. 8 Language for Creating Complex Texts 219 This chapter provides ways to develop language for the types of academic writing addressed in the Common Core State Standards. It emphasizes a deep analysis of the complex ways in which students must think, organize, fortify, negotiate, and communicate knowledge in a discipline as experts vi Contents

9 might do. It provides ideas for modeling, scaffolding, and analyzing texts that students will be asked to write. 9 Building Language Development into Lessons and Assessments 245 This chapter introduces ways to formatively and summatively assess ways of using academic language to show learning of Common Core State Standards, as well as hints for planning for instruction based on assessments. It emphasizes the importance of identifying the thinking and language that we want students to learn before we leap into instruction. 10 Concluding Thoughts 281 This book ends with some final thoughts and next steps for weaving the ideas presented in it into daily practice. Appendix A Recommended Resources on Academic Language 287 Appendix B Frequently Used Academic Words 293 Appendix C Suggestions for Before, During, and After Minilectures 299 About the Author 303 About the International Reading Association 305 Index 307 Contents vii

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11 Preface to the Second Edition The need to develop students academic language abilities has become more urgent in light of the new standards. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS), in particular, require students to use language in more sophisticated ways: arguing, evaluating evidence, analyzing complex texts, and engaging in academic discussions. Many of these language demands are also found in the Next Generation Science Standards and various sets of English Language Development standards. So while this book emphasizes the Common Core, I often use the term new standards throughout the chapters. The first edition of this book provided a general overview of academic language development; this second edition zooms in on more specific standards and ways to build language for meeting them. As students leave the primary grades, their academic success depends more and more on their abilities to use academic language the language used to describe abstract concepts, complex ideas, and critical thinking. A common misconception of academic language is that it is just a long list of key content words, such as covalent, meritocracy, reciprocal, hyperbole, and onomatopoeia. Yet content vocabulary knowing the big words is just one dimension of academic language. Students must also develop skills with the many smaller words and grammatical conventions that make the big words stick together to make meaning. This book therefore emphasizes the terms and tactics that tend to slip under our content vocabulary radar but are vital for describing the abstract concepts, higher-order thinking processes, and complex relationships in each discipline. ix

12 Academic language is often cited as one of the key factors affecting the achievement gap that exists between high- and low-performing groups of students in our schools (Wong Fillmore, 2004). And whether performance is measured by large tests or informal observations, many students perform poorly because they cannot meet the linguistic demands of different disciplines. This is especially visible in upper-elementary and secondary classes. As students move out of the primary grades, they enter not only new classrooms but also new ways of knowing, thinking, and communicating. Students who underperform often have backgrounds that have not primed them for mainstream schooling s ways of learning, speaking, reading, and thinking. You can probably picture several (perhaps several dozen) of these students right now. They are immigrants, great-grandchildren of immigrants, speakers of nonmainstream dialects, special education students, and others who have not been immersed in the academic thought and talk that is valued in school. As a result, their performances are not valued when they take tests, as they read and write, or as they participate in class discussions. These students need more than tutoring sessions, new software programs, special classes, extra visuals, and test preparation programs. They need rich classroom experiences that accelerate the language that supports their content knowledge, thinking skills, communication skills, and literacy skills. Students need curricula and teaching that connect to their cultural and cognitive roots, and they need accelerated learning because their high-performing peers do not linger around, waiting for them to catch up. This book looks at general types of academic language used across subject areas, as well as the variations of language used specifically in science, math, history, and language arts. It also offers suggestions for making content classrooms more conducive to building students language and thinking abilities to meet the Common Core and other new standards. The suggestions and activities are meant to be woven into and added to current teaching and assessment practices. My own teaching experiences inspired me to write this book. In each of the elementary, middle school, high school, and even university courses that I have taught, my students have struggled with the language of academic reading, writing, and discussion. I realized that I was not doing enough to build their academic language abilities. I researched what other teachers were doing to apprentice students into different communities of practice (science, math, history, x Preface to the Second Edition

13 language arts) through language use. My ongoing work with elementary and secondary teachers has also influenced the content of this book. I work with a variety of content teachers to come up with effective support for their many diverse learners. I coach and engage in action research with many teachers who are focused on developing the language of the new standards. Most of the work centers on the literacy and discourse standards of the Common Core State Standards. Academic language was also the focus of my doctoral research, a six-month case study in which I recorded and analyzed language use in middle school content-area classes three times a week. My main question was, How do teachers develop the language that students need for success in different content classes? I concluded that academic language is (1) intricately linked to higher-order thinking processes, (2) developed by extensive modeling and scaffolding of classroom talk, and (3) accelerated by weaving direct teaching of its features while teaching content concepts. I also concluded that academic language and its teaching are much more complex and important than most educators realize (Zwiers, 2005). Many of the classroom dialogue excerpts in this book come from my study, conducted in classrooms in which more than half the students in each class came from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Many students spoke other languages at home (most often Spanish) and African American vernacular English. I have continued to observe similarly diverse upper-elementary, middle, and high school content classrooms. In every class, I see students struggle to use language in ways desired by teachers and the new standards, especially on assessments. But I also notice that as students enter upper grades and secondary school, their teachers typically focus less on language development and more on content learning. The results of my research aligned with the findings of other scholars who argue that teachers need more practical awareness of the language that is what I call the lifeblood of learning in all classes (Fillmore & Snow, 2002; Valdés, Bunch, Snow, Lee, & Matos, 2005). In addition, teachers around the world tell me about the scores of minoritylanguage speakers who fail in school because they lack the valued skills of school literacy and language use. For example, in Mexico students lack academic Spanish, in China they lack academic Mandarin, and in Egypt they lack academic Arabic. Preface to the Second Edition xi

14 A challenging set of questions has emerged in my ongoing work with teachers and in my own classroom teaching. These questions have helped shape and organize this book: What is academic language, and how can I build it as I teach content? How can I adapt my curriculum and assessment to build on my students cultural and linguistic strengths? How can I get students to think together to coconstruct meaning rather than just study to memorize? How can I build language skills for complex reading and writing? How can I assess thinking skills and language proficiency in useful ways? How can I most effectively apprentice students into thinking and talking like experts in my discipline? In my discussions with teachers about these questions, I realized that a practical guide might be useful, particularly for teachers in grades 5 through 12 who do not have time to sift through more theoretical (and, ironically, more academic) books on the topic. I drew from research in the areas of language development, language acquisition, and cognitive psychology. I looked closely at work by scholars of school language, such as Courtney Cazden, Alan Luke, Robin Scarcella, Susana Dutro, Deborah Short, Gordon Wells, Neil Mercer, Shirley Brice-Heath, James Gee, Lisa Delpit, Mary Schleppegrell, Victoria Purcell-Gates, Lev Vygotsky, Guadalupe Valdés, and Lily Wong Fillmore. I then included research-based teaching activities that would be of interest to preservice teachers, content-area teachers who work with diverse populations, English language development teachers, bilingual teachers, special education teachers, teacher trainers, and others who wish to improve the ways in which we help students add the languages valued in school. To do this, I argue that all teachers should become what I call practical educational linguists. We must know about the basic inner workings of language in our discipline and put this knowledge into practice in our classrooms. Before looking at the surface features of academic language, we need to understand its roots. Chapter 1 therefore introduces foundational social and cultural perspectives of languages used in and out of school. xii Preface to the Second Edition

15 Chapter 2 clarifies the functions and features of academic language, including academic grammar, which is the set of rules and conventions that organize words and phrases in school. Science, math, and history teachers should also teach some grammar, given that each discipline emphasizes different ways of thinking that require different grammatical conventions. When students learn these conventions, they gain access to the codes (or blueprints) that accelerate their comprehension and writing abilities. And as an intentional bonus, students learn and understand more content in the process. Chapter 3 provides an overview of language acquisition, along with key teacher habits and strategies for modeling and scaffolding academic language. And because we teachers are not perfect communicators, this chapter also helps us improve our own language use in classroom settings. Chapter 4 then describes variations of language that correspond to the main content areas taught in schools: math, language arts, history, and science. The latter half of the book is about designing classroom experiences and assessments to help students reach sustainable and growing levels of academic language use. (Most classroom activities are marked with a symbol for easy reference.) Chapter 5 offers strategies for developing students academic speaking and listening in whole-class settings. Chapter 6 focuses on ways to adapt and fortify commonly used group and pair activities strategies for academic language development. Chapter 7 looks at the language of reading, emphasizing the development of language to help in comprehending difficult texts. It also includes a section on teaching content-area vocabulary. Chapter 8 provides ways to develop language for academic writing. Chapter 9 introduces ways to assess academic language and plan for instruction based on what we see in assessments. It emphasizes that before we leap into instruction, we must identify the thinking skills, concepts, and language that we want students to learn. Chapter 10 offers some final thoughts and next steps for weaving the ideas in this book into daily practice. The appendixes provide helpful references, examples of academic words, and suggestions for lesson design. References Fillmore, L., & Snow, C. (2002). What teachers need to know about language. In C. A. Adger, C. E. Snow, & D. Christian (Eds.), What teachers need to know Preface to the Second Edition xiii