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  • Academic English: A Conceptual Framework

    Robin Scarcella's take on this topic. She is at UCI. Note she talks about "academic English" as opposed to "academic language." Another fine distinction?

    www.lmri.ucsb.edu/...03_scarcella.pdf - Preview

    academic language on 2008-11-16

  • Educating English Language Learners: Building Teacher Capacity

    Includes general information as well as specific suggestions in science and social studies, among others.

    www.ncela.gwu.edu/...volume_I.pdf - Preview

    social studies ELL academic language on 2008-11-16

  • Assessment of Content Understanding through Science Explanation Tasks

    Authors "found a recurring discrepancy between assessment scoring criteria and performance expectations. Without explicit scoring criteria to evaluate the language performance, it is difficult to determine how much of the overall performance quality can be attributed to language skills versus content knowledge. This is an especially important validity question for English Learners (ELs) under the current state assessment mandates."

    www.cse.ucla.edu/...summary.asp - Preview

    science assessment ELL academic language on 2008-11-16

    • Our recent review of content assessments revealed that language expectations and
      proficiencies are often implicitly embedded within the assessment criteria. Based on a
      review of performance assessments used in high school biology settings, we have found a
      recurring discrepancy between assessment scoring criteria and performance expectations.
      Without explicit scoring criteria to evaluate the language performance, it is difficult to
      determine how much of the overall performance quality can be attributed to language
      skills versus content knowledge.

  • What is Academic Language?

    A clear definition from one organization's perspective.

    www.academiclanguage.org/Academic_Language.html - Preview

    academic language on 2008-11-15 and saved by 2 people

  • Conceptualizing Academic Language

    Provides an introduction to what is meant by the term "academic language." Specific subject-area examples include history and social science generally. Relates research done in two classrooms and results of a survey of teachers on the topic of academic language.

    www.ncela.gwu.edu/...rr15.htm - Preview

    social studies academic language on 2008-10-04

    • Short (1994) notes that students must be able to use the following language functions
      effectively in American history classes: explaining, describing, defining, justifying,
      giving examples, sequencing, comparing, and evaluating. According to Short, history texts
      employ a variety of syntax types, including simple past, historical present, sequence
      words, active voice, temporal signals, and causative signals. She points out that,
      although these language functions are not exclusive to American history, they do play an
      important role in the language learning and content comprehension of students.
    • Coelho (1982) discusses the functions of the academic language of social studies by
      subject area. For example, history often uses time-specific language, signalling of cause
      and effect, hypothesizing, generalizing, comparing and contrasting, and adopting
      specialized vocabulary. Chamot and O'Malley (1986) also discuss the following features of
      the academic language of social studies that might be difficult for language minority
      students to learn: the use of unfamiliar political/cultural concepts (such as democracy),
      an expository discourse style, and textbook sentences with multiple embeddings.
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