What is academic language?
- The language used in classrooms – termed ‘academic language’ – is different from everyday language and takes significantly longer to learn.
- Academic language is more abstract, more formal, and has more specific vocabulary than everyday language. It is also much less common.
- All students need to learn academic language, but bilingual students face particular challenges when learning it in their second language.
- Particular patterns of classroom talk (for example, the way to ask questions in class) may also be relatively unfamiliar to bilingual Pasifika (and other bilingual) students.
- Teachers need to be aware of these language differences and teach them explicitly to bilingual students (indeed, to all students), rather than just assuming they will ‘naturally’ pick them up.
Characteristics of language
Our knowledge and use of language, or languages, continues to grow throughout our lives. This is particularly evident when we encounter different contexts, or language domains , and must learn to use our language(s) appropriately in these varied contexts.
The nature of the context will determine the particular language register required to function effectively within that context. For example, business contexts generally require a more formal language register in a variety of language modes such as public presentations and written reports. Specialist areas of interest usually require knowledge of the technical terms, or jargon , associated with them.
Education is obviously a key language context, requiring students to develop an understanding of the specific language registers and specialist vocabulary associated with each subject, as well as a wide variety of related ways of using the language modes (for example, for transactional writing, descriptive writing, reading, and public speaking).
In the late 1970s, the researcher Jim Cummins coined the term Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) as the language of conversation, and it takes much longer to learn – particularly for bilingual or L2 learners.
It normally takes about 2 years for a child’s conversational ability or surface fluency in an L2 to develop, yet it takes between 5 and 8 years or even longer for the academic skills required to cope with classroom language and curriculum content to develop fully. (See Cummins, 2000, for a summary of the research that supports this statement.) This is called the second language learning delay . (See May, 2002 for further discussion.) Bilingual Pasifika students can have highly developed conversational skills in English, yet still perform poorly in school if their academic language skills remain underdeveloped.
Not all teachers are aware of this phenomenon. Some may assume that if a bilingual student has good conversational English, they will also be able to easily handle the curriculum content in mainstream classrooms in New Zealand. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. If these students do not succeed in acquiring academic English, they find it much harder to achieve well at school. This has been the pattern for many bilingual Pasifika students in mainstream New Zealand schools, and perhaps explains why Pasifika and other bilingual students are disproportionately represented in New Zealand’s ‘literacy tail’. (See the inquiry Why are Pasifika languages keys to learning? for further discussion.)
The reasons why it takes so long to learn the academic register of a language such as English, and why is it particularly difficult for bilingual or L2 students are because academic language:
- is more formal than conversational language
- tends to use more passive constructions than conversational language (for example, ”It has been argued by X …” rather than “X argues that …”)
- is often less contextualised and so provides fewer supports (such as illustrations) to help the listener understand or interpret messages
- is more abstract – that is, it has significantly more words that refer to abstract ideas than conversational language, which tends to be more concrete (see the box below)
- has more difficult (and less common) vocabulary than conversational language (see the box).
We can see the differences between everyday language and academic language clearly by looking at vocabulary. Using English as an example, the words on the left are widely known and frequently used. They tend to refer to concrete things rather than abstract ideas. The words on the right are commonly used in classrooms, and while they are not jargon that is specific to certain subjects, they are much less commonly known or used outside of the classroom. Therefore, we cannot assume that students will necessarily know the words on the right, or be able to use them appropriately.
|
Time |
Chapter |
|
People |
Component |
|
Years |
Text |
|
Work |
Criterion |
|
Something |
Data |
|
World |
Design |
|
Children |
Focus |
|
Life |
Hypothesis |
(Adapted from Corson, 2000.)
