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CHAPTER 7

The Challenge of Academic Language

Catherine E. Snow and Paola Uccelli 1

Increasingly in recent years, educators have cern about its inadequate development,
related worries about students’ literacy there is no simple definition of what aca-
accomplishments to their lack of “academic demic language is. What we consider “aca-
language skills” (August & Shanahan, 2006; demic language” in this chapter is referred
Halliday & Martin, 1993; Pilgreen, 2006; to in the literature using a variety of
Schleppegrell & Colombi, 2002). Indeed, it terms: the language of education (Halliday,
seems clear that control over academic lan- 1994); the language of school, the language
guage is a requirement for success with of schooling, the language that reflects school-
challenging literacy tasks, such as reading ing (Schleppegrell, 2001); advanced liter-
textbooks or writing research papers and acy (Colombi & Schleppegrell, 2002); scien-
literature reviews. As early as the middle- tific language (Halliday & Martin, 1993); or,
elementary grades, students are expected more specifically, academic English (Bailey,
to learn new information from content- 2007; Scarcella, 2003). As suggested by these
area texts, so failure to understand the terms, one approach to characterizing aca-
academic language of those texts can be a demic language is to resort to the contexts
serious obstacle in their accessing informa- for its use – the language used in school,
tion. Accountability assessments requiring in writing, in public, in formal settings (see
written essays in persuasive or analytic gen- Table 7.1 for a more complete list). Thus,
res are often graded using criteria that refer for example, Scarcella (2003) defines aca-
implicitly to academic-language forms. Even demic English as “a variety or register of
in the primary grades, students are expected English used in professional books and char-
in some classrooms to abide by rules for acterized by the linguistic features asso-
“accountable talk” (Michaels & O’Connor, ciated with academic disciplines” (p. 9).
2002 which specify features encompassed in Similarly, Chamot and O’Malley (1994)
the term academic language. identify it with school, defining it as “the lan-
Despite the frequent invocations of “aca- guage that is used by teachers and students
demic language” and the widespread con- for the purpose of acquiring new knowledge

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THE CHALLENGE OF ACADEMIC LANGUAGE 113

Table 7.1. Contextual Factors

Audience

(Home, friends) (School) (College/professional)


Real familiar vs. Pretended distant vs. Alternative communities
cooperative uncooperative with various levels of
interlocutor interlocutors disciplinary knowledge
(assess interlocutor’s (suspend assumptions (become familiar with
shared knowledge) of situational knowledge) expectations of audience)
Dialogic/interactive vs. Monologic vs. Delayed dialogue
Activity/Modality

Spontaneous/improvised vs. Highly planned


Process (dynamic) vs. Product (synoptic)
Spoken vs. Written vs. Other additional media
Situation
Private vs. Public
Informal vs. Formal
Sociocultural match of Primary and Secondary discourses

Closer match vs. Partial mismatch vs. Full mismatch


(e.g., home and school) (e.g., home and school)
r same language r different language
r similar discourse patterns r different discourse patterns

and skills . . . imparting new information, Indeed, this topic, which seems as if it
describing abstract ideas, and developing should be located in the exact center of
students’ conceptual understanding” (p. 40). educators’ concerns, is notably absent from
Whereas identifying contexts of use and the table of contents in the most up-to-date
purposes is important, a comprehensive def- handbook of educational linguistics (Spolsky
inition of academic language requires fur- & Hult, 2007). Ironically, although academic
ther specification. Scarcella (2003) identifies language skills are widely cited as the obsta-
three dimensions required for academic- cle to achievement for struggling readers
language proficiency: linguistic, cogni- in general, much of the empirical research
tive, and sociocultural/psychological. Bailey on academic language has been done by
defines being academically proficient as those studying English Language Learners
“knowing and being able to use general and (ELLs). In other words, learning ‘academic
content-specific vocabulary, specialized or English’ is recognized as a challenging task
complex grammatical structures, and mul- for second-language speakers of English, but
tifarious language functions and discourse the challenges faced by native speakers in
structures – all for the purpose of acquiring learning the rules, the structures, and the
new knowledge and skills, interacting about content of academic English have received
a topic, or imparting information to others” much less attention.
(Bailey, 2007, pp. 10–11; in press). One line of thinking about academic
Despite these advances in delineating language started with Cummins’ propos-
academic language, a conceptualization of ed distinction between Cognitive Aca-
academic language within a consensual ana- demic Language Proficiency (CALP) and
lytical framework that could guide educa- Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skill
tionally relevant research is still lacking. (BICS) – a distinction he presented as
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114 CATHERINE E. SNOW AND PAOLA UCCELLI

relevant to second-language learners. In grammatical resources that make scientific


Cummins’ original formulation of this dis- thought possible.
tinction (Cummins, 1980, 1981), BICS was Although SFL has proven to be highly
presented as easy and relatively automat- relevant in studying the language of school
ically acquired, whereas acquiring CALP (Schleppegrell, 2001), it is a linguistically
was seen as a lengthier process. Cummins sophisticated model originally designed
was the first to point out cogently that more as a theory of language than as a frame-
many assessments of second-language pro- work for educational research. An educa-
ficiency focus exclusively on BICS yet are tionally relevant framework would direct
used to place students in classroom con- less attention to the description of linguistic
texts where CALP is required for success features per se and more to the skills
(see Kieffer, Lesaux, & Snow, 2008, for an required in the process of mastering aca-
updated version of this argument as it relates demic language and, thus, potentially to the
to the testing requirements of the U.S. No nature of instruction that would promote
Child Left Behind Act). Although Cum- those skills. In other words, we argue for
mins’ work was crucial in raising aware- the value of practice-embedded approaches
ness of the gulf between conversational and to thinking about academic language that
academic language, he did not specify in would generate more directly useable infor-
much detail which particular language skills mation. For example, Bailey (2007) derived
were encompassed by CALP, in either his valuable data about academic-language de-
original discussions of it or later, somewhat mands on ELLs from an analysis of content
more elaborated formulations (Cummins, standards, classroom discourse, and the
1984, 2001). tests they are expected to pass. Scarcella
A more theory-based approach that has (2003) and Schleppegrell (2001) also adum-
contributed centrally to our understanding brated the nature of academic language
of language, in general, and of academic by describing the typical failures of ELLs
language, in particular, is Systemic Func- who have advanced conversational skills
tional Linguistics (SFL) (Halliday, 1994b). but who struggle with high school or uni-
SFL studies language in its social context, versity writing tasks and by proposing
understanding language as both shaping and instructional approaches to improving the
resulting from social circumstances. Within academic-language skills of ELL students in
this framework, linguists search for system- tertiary-education settings.
atic relationships between the social con- Although the problem of academic lan-
text and linguistic features, including lex- guage may be particularly visible or acute
icogrammatical and discourse elements, in for second-language speakers, in fact, we
their analysis of the registers of particu- argue that academic language is intrinsically
lar genres.2 In studying academic language, more difficult than other language regis-
Halliday (1993) emphasized its multidimen- ters and that thinking about the educational
sional and dynamic nature. On the one hand, experiences that promote its development
he warned us that there is no single aca- is a crucial task for educators of all stu-
demic language, just as there is no single dents. Furthermore, formulating instruc-
British English, but rather a number of vari- tional approaches to academic language is
eties that share certain core features. On the necessary not just for achievement in the
other hand, Halliday highlighted that aca- domains traditionally associated with lan-
demic language is continually evolving as guage (e.g., literature study, English lan-
the sciences, disciplines, and subdisciplines guage arts) but also for achievement in
themselves evolve. In fact, he argued that math, science, and other areas where all-
the evolution of science goes hand in hand purpose academic language forms the core
with the evolution of scientific language, of content-area–specific language. Designing
so that academic or scientific languages are instruction for academic and discipline-
not arbitrary sets of conventions but rather specific language, however, requires having
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THE CHALLENGE OF ACADEMIC LANGUAGE 115

a convergent view of what academic lan- guage that has passed some threshold quali-
guage involves, how it should be concep- fying it as academic.
tualized, where its boundaries are, and how
it might be assessed.
Certainly, members of the academy can Academic Language in Use:
identify violations of academic language Some Examples
in our students’ writing and may have
learned something about the features of aca- The example we analyze herein was an end-
demic language by working hard to stamp of-week paragraph produced by a middle-
them out in writings meant to communi- school student participating in the pilot
cate with practitioners or the general pub- implementation of a program intended to
lic. Despite these practice-based sources of promote knowledge of all-purpose ‘aca-
knowledge about academic language, the demic’ vocabulary in particular and use of
central concept remains somewhat inchoate academic language more generally. The pro-
and underspecified. In the absence of a con- gram was designed for use in an urban dis-
ceptual framework, it is difficult to design trict in which assessment had suggested that
instruction to promote academic language, students’ reading comprehension challenges
to properly assess academic-language skills, might be related to vocabulary limitations.
or to understand what normal, expectable Classroom observations in this district also
progress toward achievement of academic- showed that the vocabulary instruction that
language skills might look like. occurred was primarily focused on disci-
The goal of this chapter is to survey the plinary terms (e.g., sonnet, legislation, diges-
work on academic language in order to pro- tion, and rhomboid in English language arts,
vide an overview of its features as a basis social studies, science, and math, respec-
for proposing a pragmatics-based framework tively), whereas pretesting showed that a
that accommodates those many discrete significant proportion of the students was
features in a coherent model of communi- struggling with the more all-purpose vocab-
cation. Based on this pragmatic framework, ulary found in their texts, including words
we then propose a research agenda focusing like dramatic, interpret, sufficient, and decade.
on issues that would take our understand- The program consisted of week-long
ing of this important topic a step farther. units in each of which five ‘academic vocab-
Given the absence of an agreed-upon set ulary’ words were targeted. The five tar-
of criteria for academic language, we start get words (and other words of similarly low
by presenting an example of middle-school frequency) were introduced in the context
student writing to illustrate the rules of aca- of a paragraph about a topic selected to
demic language. We then turn to a more be engaging to young adolescents and to
formal inventory, based on theorizing about be somewhat open-ended (i.e., supporting
the differences between oral and written a number of different plausible points of
language, between informal and formal lan- view). The introductory paragraphs were
guage, and between narrative and expository written in a style that might be character-
language, because these three distinctions ized as ‘serious journalistic’ and each briefly
overlap with and contribute to a sharpen- presented two or more positions on the
ing of the definition of academic language. It topic of the week, with limited elaboration
is notable that academic language, unlike the of each position. The instructional program
categories of written, formal, and expository presented focused teaching about the target
language, has no clear opposite. We start, words (i.e., their varying meanings in dif-
then, from the assumption that language can ferent contexts, morphological analyses, and
be more or less academic – that is, furnished variants of them) as well as contexts for the
with fewer or more of the traits that are typ- students to use the words. Thus, some form
ical of academic language; we have no basis of debate about the issue in the paragraph
for postulating a separate category of lan- was recommended for social studies class
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116 CATHERINE E. SNOW AND PAOLA UCCELLI

and “taking a stand,” a short argumentative future leaders of the


essay in which each student was asked to world. That’s [why]
develop and justify his or her opinion about we need to work with
the topic of the week, was the standard Fri- the function of the
day activity. school[,] so you [can]
It is important to note that these “taking show us [how] the
world should be.
a stand” paragraphs were written in 10 to
15 minutes, were not preceded by explicit
instruction in how to construct them, and As a piece of writing from a seventh-
were not graded. Thus, we can assume grader, this falls short of excellence on many
that they reflect something of the students’ grounds. First, it is inconsistent in attention
natural and unedited writing style, with the to conventions like capitalization, punctu-
exception that students were encouraged ation, and spelling (corrections introduced
to use the words of the week if possible; for readability are indicated in square brack-
complying with this request sometimes led ets). Second, the major position expressed
to awkward constructions or even outright (i.e., we go to school to get a good job,
errors. to be what we want to be when we grow
up) is somewhat obscured by other claims
EXAMPLE 1: Female Seventh-Grader (12/08/06), (i.e., attending school is necessary for pro-
responding to the prompt: What do you think the motion to higher grades, teachers will not
function of school is? promote students out of pity, teachers want
students to learn) whose relationship to the
central claim is left unclear. These issues
What’s the purpose of • involved style
school you tell me! • colloquial expressions
of form and content are rightly impor-
Well first of all, school • redundancy tant in judging this as a piece of writing,
is to get your • simple connectives but our focus in this chapter is how we
education. • inconsistent respond to it as a piece of academic lan-
[S]o we can learn what perspective- guage. The key question is: What is the
the teachers learn[,] so taking(you/we) most effective pedagogical response to writ-
we can be ready for ings like this? Will academic language fol-
the 8th grade. Because low naturally if students are helped to for-
if we don’t get [an] mulate their ideas more fully and precisely,
education[,] you can’t or should one teach the academic forms
be what you want to using the content the students themselves
be when [you] grow
have generated? If we agree that revision
up.
Secondly to get us
and rewriting help to improve the quality
ready so we can make of writing (Klein & Olson, 2001), then what
it to the 8th grade would be the best strategies to scaffold effec-
ready and prepared[.] tive revision and rewriting geared toward
[T]hey don’t want to improving academic-language skills more
send [us] to the 8th broadly?
grade because they like Consider Example 1a, a rewritten ver-
us or the[y] just feel sion of the previous example paragraph that
sorry for us. No! attempts to express the same ideas in a more
[T]hat’s not the academic form.
reason[.] [T]hey want
to prepare [us,] make EXAMPLE 1A.
sure we understand What is the purpose of school?
the work. When we First, school functions to provide an education,
grow up we also want so students can learn what the teachers know and
to get a good job be prepared to continue their education at higher
because we are the levels. Teachers will not promote students who
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THE CHALLENGE OF ACADEMIC LANGUAGE 117

have not learned the material, so understanding Finally, comparing the student taking-a-
the work is very important. Without an educa- stand paragraph to the original paragraph
tion, attaining one’s career goals is very difficult. designed to stimulate thinking about this
Second, getting a good job is dependent on topic reveals still more academic-language
going to school. Today’s students are the future features.
leaders of the world. School could help them
understand how the world should be. EXAMPLE 1B. Paragraph prompt.
What is the purpose of school?
Analyzing the differences between Ex- Why do we go to school? One prime goal of edu-
amples 1 and 1a reveals some of the key cation is to transmit knowledge. Another is to
features of academic language. Example 1a enhance students’ capacities to earn a good liv-
eliminates markers of involvement (e.g., ing. Some would argue that schools should orient
you tell me! No!); removes redundancy students toward a set of shared values, in order
(the point about getting ready for eighth to facilitate the maintenance of a democratic
grade is made twice in Example 1, only state. Others contend that schools should help
once in Example 1a); moves from specific students develop an understanding of the per-
spectives of others, to promote social harmony.
and personal to generic formulations of
Still others think schools should teach students to
claims (eighth grade becomes education at
challenge authority, reject received opinion, and
higher levels; they don’t want to send us . . . think for themselves. Of course, if we accept this
becomes teachers will not promote . . . ); last version of what schools should do, then we
substitutes metadiscourse markers ( first, will have to expect that the curriculum will be
second) for more colloquial expressions (well massively adjusted and classroom activities radi-
first of all); compresses Example 1 clauses cally altered. Whereas thinking for themselves is
into adverbial phrases (without an educa- something educators value, students don’t always
tion) and nominalizations (getting a good have the license to do so in the classroom.
job); and imposes a consistent, distant, This adult-written paragraph reveals a
third-person perspective, whereas Example number of features not present in the stu-
1 shifts between first- and second-person dent paragraphs, as follows:
perspectives. Although more academic in
style, Example 1a is still not a particu- r
larly good response to the topic assigned lexical density
r modal verbs
because it is restricted to the same ideas r
presented in more or less the same order as endophoric reference
r abstract entity as agent (school)
Example 1. r
The paragraphs written by the middle- wide variety of connectives
r stepwise logical argumentation
grade students participating in this program r
were not devoid of academic-language fea- evidence of planning
r detached stance
tures. Some students provided overarch- r
ing initial or concluding statements, used authoritative stance
r lots of abstract/low-frequency vocabulary
metadiscourse markers, and incorporated r
the academic vocabulary they were taught. elaborate noun phrases (nominalization)
r markers of course of rationale
Nonetheless, the paragraphs, particularly r
in contrast to the more academic trans- deductive/inductive inference
lations one could provide for them, dis-
played language features inappropriate for Some of these features, such as the high
academic language (e.g., colloquial expres- density of relatively low-frequency words,
sions, involvement markers, redundancy) were deliberately introduced into the para-
and revealed characteristics of academic lan- graph to serve the purposes of the program.
guage that the students did not employ (e.g., Others were required by the argumentative
grammatical compression, generic state- genre; these included the logical progression
ments, impersonal stance, a variety of con- of the argument and the explicit marking
nectives). of different points of view. Other features,
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118 CATHERINE E. SNOW AND PAOLA UCCELLI

such as the use of nominalization, were a lexical choices, and representational con-
product of efforts to keep the paragraph gruence (i.e., how grammar is used to
brief. Others, such as the authoritative and depict reality). Of course, the realization
detached stance, are simply the default aca- of all these features requires knowledge of
demic writing style. specific vocabulary and grammatical struc-
tures. In addition to these linguistic skills,
three core domains of cognitive accomplish-
Academic Language: An Inventory ment involved in academic-language per-
of Features formance are genre mastery, command of
reasoning/argumentative strategies, and dis-
Having explored examples of academic ciplinary knowledge.
language and its absence in actual practice, The typical interpersonal stance expected
we now must confront the issue of how to in academic language is detached and author-
conceptualize ‘academic language.’ A first itative. As we saw in Example 1, you tell me!
advantage of a coherent characterization and No! are markers of an involved style
of academic language might be the value that in Schleppegrell’s words form part of
of sharing it with struggling students. a “hortatory style that instantiates a con-
Schleppegrell (2001) argues that only rarely text of interaction” (2001, p. 446). In con-
are the linguistic expectations of school- trast, academic language requires a nondia-
based tasks made explicit to students, logical and distant construction of opinion,
despite the fact that students’ academic as well as “an assertive author [or speaker]
performance is judged considering these who presents him/herself as a knowledge-
expectations. Without explicit discussion of able expert providing objective informa-
linguistic expectations, academic language tion” (Schleppegrell, 2001, pp. 444–445) (for
constitutes an arcane challenge for many, an illustration of detached versus involved
and some explicit teaching about it might writing styles, see Schleppegrell, 2001,
be useful. p. 445).
Linguists and educational researchers The information load in academic dis-
have revealed features about which students course is characterized by conciseness and
might be taught through contrastive analy- density. Academic writing or speech is
sis of language corpora (e.g., Biber & Rep- expected to be short and to the point,
pen, 2002; Chafe & Danielewicz, 1987), evo- conveying information without unjustified
lutionary analysis of scientific language (Hal- repetitions. In Example 1, the repetition
liday & Martin, 1993), explorations of per- of being ready for 8th grade stands out
formances at different levels of expertise as a violation to the flow of information
(Schleppegrell, 2001), in different academic expected in such a piece of writing. In con-
disciplines (Achugar & Schleppegrell, 2005; trast to the typical redundancy of sponta-
Schleppegrell, 2007), and in specific gen- neous speech (Ong, 1982/1995), conciseness
res (Halliday & Martin, 1993; Swales, 1990). is highly valued, with only the minor excep-
Table 7.2 represents an effort to summarize tions of artful pseudo-redundant moves such
this literature, by organizing the many lin- as those included in abstracts or sum-
guistic features identified under the domains maries and conclusions. Besides, academic
of knowledge involved in academic lan- language packs a lot of information into
guage in a way that makes them some- a few words. This informational density is
what more tractable.3 The features listed evident in the high proportion of content
to the left are more characteristic of collo- words, usually achieved through nominal-
quial language, whereas the features toward izations and expanded noun phrases (Chafe
the right are more typical of academic lan- & Danielewicz , 1987; Halliday & Martin,
guage. Linguistic features are divided into 1993; Schleppegrell, 2001).
those referring to interpersonal stance, infor- At the syntactic level of organization of
mation load, organization of information, information, Halliday (1994b) subdivided the
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THE CHALLENGE OF ACADEMIC LANGUAGE 119

Table 7.2. Linguistic Features and Core Domains of Cognitive Accomplishments Involved
in Academic Language Performance

More Colloquial More Academic

1. Interpersonal stance
Expressive/Involved → Detached/Distanced (Schleppegrell, 2001)
Situationally driven personal → Authoritative stance (Schleppegrell, 2001)
stances
2. Information load
Redundancy (Ong, 1995)/ → Conciseness
Wordiness
Sparsity → Density (proportion of content words per total words)
(Schleppegrell, 2001)
3. Organization of information
Dependency (Halliday, → Constituency (Halliday, 1994b)/Subordination (Ong, 1995)
1993)/Addition (Ong, 1995) (embedding, one element is a structural part of another)
(one element is bound or
linked to another but is not
part of it)
Minimal awareness of → Explicit awareness of organized discourse
unfolding text as discourse (central role of textual metadiscourse markers)
(marginal role of (Hyland & Tse, 2004)
metadiscourse markers)
Situational support → Autonomous text
(exophoric reference) (endophoric reference)
Loosely connected/dialogic → Stepwise logical argumentation/unfolding, tightly constructed
structure
4. Lexical choices
Low lexical diversity → High lexical diversity (Chafe & Danielewicz, 1987)
Colloquial expressions → Formal/prestigious expressions (e.g., say/like vs. for instance)
Fuzziness (e.g., sort of, → Precision (lexical choices and connectives)
something, like)
Concrete/common-sense → Abstract/technical concepts
concepts
5. Representational congruence
Simple/congruent grammar → Complex/congruent → Compact/Incongruent
(simple sentences, e.g., You grammar (complex grammar (clause
heat water and it evaporates sentences, e.g., If the water embedding and
faster.) gets hotter, it evaporates nominalization, e.g.,
faster.) The increasing
evaporation of water
due to rising
temperatures)
(Halliday, 1993)
Animated entities as agents → Abstract concepts as agents
(e.g., Gutenberg invented (e.g., Printing technology
printing with movable type.) revolutionized European
book-making.) (Halliday,
1993)
Genre mastery
Generic Values (Bhatia, 2002) → School-based genres → Discipline-specific
(narration, description, (e.g., lab reports, specialized genres
explanation. . .) persuasive essay)

(continued)
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120 CATHERINE E. SNOW AND PAOLA UCCELLI

Table 7.2 (continued)

More Colloquial More Academic

Reasoning strategies
Basic ways of argumentation → Specific reasoning moves → Discipline-specific
and persuasion valued at school reasoning moves
(Reznitskaya et al., 2001)
Disciplinary knowledge
• Taxonomies
Commonsense understanding → Abstract groupings and → Disciplinary taxonomies
relations and salient relations
• Epistemological assumptions
Knowledge as fact → Knowledge as constructed

traditional category of subordinated clauses In Hyland and Tse’s (2004) words: “metadis-
into “hypotactic” and “embedded” clauses. course represents the writer’s awareness of
Hypotactic clauses are subordinated clauses the unfolding text as discourse: how writ-
that are dependent on but not constitutive ers situate their language use to include a
of other clauses, such as adverbial clauses or text, a writer, and a reader” (p. 167). These
those introduced by verbs of saying or think- authors developed a taxonomy of metadis-
ing (Colombi, 2002). In the following exam- course markers and their functions by study-
ple, clause a and clause b are hypotactic ing different types of texts. Additionally,
clauses: I concluded [that the party was a total information in academic language needs to
failure]a [because it ended before midnight]b. be organized according to a stepwise logi-
In contrast, embedded clauses form part of cal argument structure that makes sophisti-
another clause, such as clause a and clause b cated use of autonomous endophoric reference
in the following sentence: The party [which strategies instead of relying on situational
ended before midnight]a was a total failure context or underspecified references.
[that we hope will not be repeated]b . Whereas At the lexical level, a diverse, precise, and
some posit that addition and coordination formal repertoire that includes appropriate
are characteristic features of colloquial lan- cross-discipline and discipline-specific terms
guage that contrast with subordination and is desirable.
complex syntax (Ong, 1982/1995), Halliday The final level concerns representational
(1994b) persuasively argued that the crucial congruence, or the correspondence between
distinction is dependency (which includes language and the reality it represents. The
hypotactic subordinated clauses) versus con- concept of grammatical metaphor plays a
stituency (embeddedness). He argued that central role in Halliday’s model. Accord-
embedding is a distinctive feature of sci- ing to Halliday (1994a), in children’s com-
entific or academic discourse. If we con- monsense language, nouns refer to things,
trast the subordinated clauses in Examples verbs refer to processes, adjectives denote
1 and 1b, it becomes evident that embed- attributes, and connectives establish rela-
ded clauses are used only in the latter tionships. However, when these grammat-
text. ical categories are extended beyond their
Organization of information also involves prototypes (e.g., when nouns refer to pro-
explicit marking of text structures. Explicit cesses like evaporation or verbs refer to
awareness of text structure is indexed via relationships like precede), a grammatical
discourse and metadiscourse markers that metaphor, which Halliday calls a compact
have been widely explored in the literature. and incongruent form, is created. He argued
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THE CHALLENGE OF ACADEMIC LANGUAGE 121

that experience is reconstructed when nom- Finally, all these linguistic features must
inalized forms such as evaporation are used; be coordinated with at least three additional
this term has the semantic features both of cognitive accomplishments: genre mastery
processes (water evaporates) and of things (Bhatia, 2002; Swales, 1990); command of
(because a noun prototypically refers to reasoning/argumentative strategies (Reznit-
things). In Halliday’s terms, these processes skaya, Anderson, Nurlen, Nguyen-Jahiel,
have been transformed metaphorically into Archodidou, & Kim, 2001); and disciplinary
virtual objects, “[t]he effect of this is to pro- knowledge (Achugar & Schleppegrell, 2005;
vide a less dynamic, more synoptic vision of Wignell, Martin, & Eggins, 1993). As stu-
the world, in which reality is as it were held dents advance in their mastery of these
still, rendered fixed, bounded and deter- three domains of knowledge, they learn
minate, so that it can be observed, mea- to put features of academic language at
sured and, if possible, explained” (Halliday, the service of genre conventions, persuasive
1994a, p. 14). Halliday emphasized that there and clear argumentations, and disciplinary-
would be no noticeable effect of sporadic specific relationships and concepts. These
uses like that but that academic language are three vast areas of research, which have
is profusely populated by these grammatical been the focus of work in fields such as
metaphors (in particular, nominalizations of English for Specific Purposes, the “Sydney
processes). school” of genre theory, and the Collabo-
Nominalization also creates lexical den- rative Reasoning approach, among others.
sity. The recursive linguistic principle per- Reviewing these three areas with the detail
mits nominalizations to function as embed- they deserve would go beyond the scope of
ded clauses of other propositions, allowing this chapter.
long, information-packed sentences. Fur- As we have seen herein, the claims that
thermore, in examples like The increasing have been made in the literature about the
evaporation of water due to rising tempera- characteristics of academic language result
tures is alarming, not only is the nominaliza- in a lengthy list of features. The mere length
tion phrase the subject of a longer sentence, of the list in Table 7.2 displays the prob-
but it also constructs the claim of relation- lem with our current conception of aca-
ship between rising temperature and evapo- demic language: dozens of traits have been
ration as assumed truth rather than a falsifi- identified that contrast with primary or col-
able claim, contributing to the authoritative loquial language and that might function
stance previously discussed. as markers of academic language, but it is
However, grammatical metaphor is not unclear that any of them actually defines
the only case of representational incongru- the phenomenon. Any of these traits might
ence. Another incongruent move of aca- be present in casual spoken language: Is it
demic language involves using abstract their co-occurrence that defines some lan-
concepts as agents. Whereas in colloquial guage as academic? Is it their frequency?
interactions, animate entities are typically How, if at all, do these various traits relate
the grammatical agents of sentences, aca- to one another? Are some particularly cru-
demic language often displays abstract con- cial and others merely epiphenomena? Are
cepts as agentive subjects of sentences. For some causes and others consequences? How
example, in Gutenberg invented printing with does the list in Table 7.2 help us with the
movable type, a noun that refers to a person is tasks of assessment or instruction?
the subject and agent of the sentence. How-
ever, the sentence, Printing technology rev-
olutionized European book-making, presents A Pragmatics-Based Approach
a noun that refers to an abstract concept to Academic Language
as agent, a less intuitive construction that
departs from our commonsense knowledge The problem with the inventorizing app-
of the world (Halliday & Martin, 1993). roach reflected in Table 7.2 is the omission
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122 CATHERINE E. SNOW AND PAOLA UCCELLI

REPRESENTING THE SELF & THE AUDIENCE

Acknowledging the status of


the audience
REPRESENTING THE MESSAGE
Performing a specific
communicative Selecting/Participating in a genre
function ORGANIZING DISCOURSE
Adjusting message to audience’s
Signaling a specific knowledge status Using discourse markers to signal textual
relationship with relations
audience Representing/Constructing
meanings and ideas Using discourse markers to signal
Representing one’s stance on interactional relations
one’s message [Indexing source of information] CONSTRUCTING
CLAUSES
Making choices of
Selecting the appropriate voice reference
Choosing lexicon
Indexing epistemological
status of one’s claims Choosing
grammatical
structures

Figure 7.1. Nested challenges within any communicative event.

of attention to the overall rationale for these In many communicative exchanges, self-
features of academic language. In other representation is fairly straightforward (e.g.,
words, we start from the assumption that self as purchaser of a kilo of onions, self as
language forms represent conventionalized student in a first-grade classroom) and the
solutions to communicative challenges and message is relatively uncomplicated (e.g.,
that decisions about specific forms consti- How much do the Vidalia onions cost? 3
tute solutions to those challenges. What are plus 2 equals 5). The rules governing dis-
the communicative challenges to which the course structure, lexical selection, and gram-
features of academic language are meant to matical formulation for such exchanges are
respond? accordingly relatively easy to learn and to
In Figures 7.1 and 7.2, we present a first implement. Furthermore, formulating some
attempt to answer this question (and, in the frequently occurring but potentially chal-
process, questions about how the traits listed lenging messages has been greatly simpli-
in Table 7.2 relate to one another). Figure 7.1 fied by the availability of conventional forms
represents a view of language in which com- designed to express them (e.g., greetings,
municative goals are seen as driving deci- requests, apologies, condolences).
sions about specifics of expression. In this We argue, however, that characteristics
view, all communicative forms are a simul- of academic language represent an accom-
taneous solution to two tasks: representing modation to the two ubiquitous features of
the self and representing the message. Rep- communicative tasks – representation of self
resenting the self involves selecting (or per- and of one’s message – under particularly
haps simply having) a voice and a relation- challenging conditions (see Figure 7.2).
ship to the audience; representing the mes- The first condition is the need to formu-
sage requires conceptualizing some thought late messages that are relatively challenging
and figuring out what the audience already on any number of grounds – for example,
knows and needs to know about it. because the content is inherently compli-
Given a representation of self and mes- cated, because some of the concepts being
sage, then discourse and utterance fea- talked about are abstract or theoretical,
tures consistent with those prior frames are because some of the claims being made have
realized. an uncertain epistemological status, and so
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THE CHALLENGE OF ACADEMIC LANGUAGE 123

REPRESENTING THE SELF AND THE AUDIENCE

Acknowledging status of
intangible non-interactive REPRESENTING THE MESSAGE
academic audience
and its level of expertise Selecting one of the approved academic genres
Displaying one’s knowledge/
Adjusting level of detail and
extending someone’s knowledge ORGANIZING DISCOURSE
amount of background
Emphasizing co-membership information provided to level of
Using discourse markers to emphasize the
with an expert academic audience expertise of the intended audience
integration of information, the causal,
temporal, or inferential relations being
Presenting a neutral, Representing abstract, theoretical
emphasized
dispassionate stance on constructs, complicated inter-
one’s message relationships, conditionals, hypo-
Expressing metatextual
theticals, counterfactuals, and other
relationships precisely
Selecting an authoritative voice challenging cognitive schemas

Explicitly acknowledging Using reference terms


[Explicitly acknowledge sources
and clarifying when necessary that are approved
of information/evidence]
the epistemological within the discourse
status of one’s claims community, often
technical

Figure 7.2. Nested challenges within a communicative event calling for academic language.

on. It is simply more difficult to explain tially rely on contextual support (e.g., point-
the process by which cells replicate, or the ing, enactment, gestures, deictics), but they
theory of evolution, or the various factors gradually learn to use language as its own
contributing to global warming than it is to context. Of course, autonomous discourse
negotiate the purchase of onions or respond skills develop throughout the school years
to an addition problem; therefore, the lan- and are needed in many nonacademic sit-
guage required must be more complicated.4 uations as well (e.g., talking on the tele-
The second challenge is to identify the phone, telling a story, writing a letter to
audience and the appropriate relationship a friend). From a communicative perspec-
between self and audience. An early devel- tive, what seems to make academic lan-
opmental task is to assess the listener’s guage particularly challenging, in addition
knowledge so as to provide sufficient infor- to the complexity of the message, is that the
mation and to gradually free language from components of the communicative situation
situational support. The additional commu- are less obvious and less accessible. In the
nicative challenges of academic language academic-discourse world, identifying pat-
require learning the traditions that govern terns of co-occurrences between specific sit-
discourse among participants in an intan- uations and linguistic forms is a much harder
gible academic community. The questions task. Approaches to this task taken by inex-
of who the audience is and what they perienced users of academic language range
know are crucial in appropriately framing from borrowing oral-language forms5 to imi-
the discourse in academic tasks, yet they tating experts’ discourse so slavishly as to
are not always easy to unravel for stu- verge on plagiarism.
dents. In face-to-face interactions, speakers Moreover, the producers of academic lan-
learn language by identifying co-occurrences guage need to establish their own level of
between language forms and situational con- authoritativeness and negotiate their rela-
text via repeated participation in similar tionship with a distant and potentially crit-
speech events with clearly identifiable par- ical or incredulous audience, through the
ticipants. In those situations, children ini- language forms chosen. Impersonal, generic,
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124 CATHERINE E. SNOW AND PAOLA UCCELLI

and distancing forms are required because of displaying knowledge to or for some-
even if a personal relationship between one, that acknowledge co-membership with
the producer of academic language and the audience, that express the speaker’s
the audience does exist, that relationship unique voice within the ‘academic commu-
is irrelevant to the self being represented nity,’ and that make explicit the epistemo-
under conditions that call for academic logical assumptions under which the speaker
language. Thus, the intrusion of spoken- is operating. Those markers, then, must be
language involvement markers in Example 1 integrated with language forms imposed by
represents a violation of academic-language an adequate representation of the message
norms because involvement with the audi- to be conveyed, which in turn leads to deci-
ence is inappropriate under those circum- sions about genre (in the broadest sense),
stances. Control over modals and explicit about the audience’s level of background
markers of epistemological status (e.g., prob- knowledge to be presupposed and the level
ably, likely, undoubtedly, evidently, obviously) of detail to be included, about the mecha-
represents acknowledgment of the need to nisms for making reference to key concepts
be explicit about the credibility of one’s and interrelationships, and about the need to
claims. That need derives partly from the acknowledge sources of information. Having
obligation to represent the message accu- established what self and what information
rately and partly from the protection of per- will be represented, then text-specific deci-
sonal authority that comes from making rea- sions at the level of discourse organization
soned and modulated claims. (e.g., How will the organizational structure
Thus, the challenge lies not only in the of the discourse be signaled? How will rela-
audience’s physical absence but also more tionships of temporality, causality, depen-
profoundly in the somewhat indeterminate dency, conditionality, and so forth be talked
nature of this audience. Figure 7.2 describes about? How much anaphoric and exophoric
the audience as an “intangible noninterac- reference is permissible?) and clause con-
tive academic audience.” At school, even structions can be made.
though teachers are the ones who request Figures 7.1 and 7.2 present a relatively
assignments, students need to suspend their simplistic view of the nested relationships
personal relationship with their teacher and among these different levels; clearly, much
ignore what they know their teacher knows more work would need to be done to spec-
in responding. Instead, they need to imag- ify implications of a specific decision at any
ine a nonfamiliar audience with high levels of the levels for decisions at lower or higher
of language but without specific knowledge levels. Nonetheless, we hope that this rep-
of the target topic. resentation makes clear that the clause- or
In line with the pragmatics-based model discourse-level characteristics typical of aca-
proposed herein, we think that two essen- demic language may occur under other cir-
tial starting points for students are to (1) cumstances, but that the most likely condi-
gain an awareness of the desired relation- tions for them are in satisfying the demands
ship among participants in academic com- that are particular to self-representing as
munications; and (2) understand that mean- a member of the ‘academic-language–using
ing resides not only in what they say but community’ and that are imposed by the
also in how they communicate it. We are need to express complex content in efficient
arguing, then, that the long list of academic- and effective ways.
language markers reviewed in Table 7.2
can be sorted out usefully by fitting the
various items into this pragmatics-based Academic Language: A Research
understanding of academic language. Forms Agenda
that have to do with the largest task –
self-representation – are those that express The view presented herein makes no clear
authoritativeness, that perform the function predictions about the order of development
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THE CHALLENGE OF ACADEMIC LANGUAGE 125

of the various academic-language markers developing language skills constitute precur-


or about an optimal approach to teaching sors to later academic language? How do
academic language. Indeed, these are issues the various components of academic lan-
we would prioritize in a research agenda guage relate to one another? The second
focused on academic language. Clearly, chil- set has to do with instruction – for exam-
dren start acquiring clause-level skills as ple: What are effective methods for pro-
soon as they learn to talk; the challenge moting academic language? Which aspects
for teachers is to figure out precisely how of the system need explicit instruction and
the construction of clauses needs to be which do not? How can we best embed
adapted to contexts in which academic lan- (or not) academic-language instruction into
guage must be produced and/or compre- attention to literacy instruction and content-
hended and what new lexical and gram- area learning?
matical knowledge is needed to succeed We expand briefly on the research base
in those contexts. Similarly, children pro- for these two sets of questions in the follow-
duce extended discourses from early in their ing sections.
language-acquisition trajectories, and they
use in conversational narratives some fea-
tures that may also be relevant to academic- The Developmental Course and
language texts. So, the specific task of Composition of Academic-Language
becoming skilled in academic language Skills
requires expanding the repertoires available
What Are the Early Precursors?
at those two levels for use in nonacademic
contexts. Even though the field of academic language
As can be inferred from the model pre- is concerned mostly with the study of later
sented herein, the skills required for suc- language development, it is of crucial impor-
cessful academic-language performance go tance to recognize that academic-language
beyond the traditionally cited lexicogram- skills fall on a continuum with earlier lan-
matical skills to include a level of meta- guage skills. Within this view, exploring
communication. For instance, research with earlier language skills that might predict
Hebrew-speaking children and adults has academic-language skills later in life is of
shown that whereas knowledge of for- particular educational relevance. Specifi-
mal sophisticated morphology and syntax cally, we need research to explore which
increases from age five to age seven, only skills are predictive of later mastery of aca-
college-educated adults and some older ado- demic language and, in turn, which contexts
lescents are capable of appropriately dis- are most conducive to efficient learning of
playing this knowledge in the construction academic-language skills.
of texts (Ravid & Tolchinsky, 2002). As Reviewing relevant literature, Blum-
stated by Berman (2004) and by Ravid and Kulka (in press) documents preschool chil-
Tolchinsky (2002), a crucial aspect of later dren’s early development in the areas of con-
language development, in addition to vocab- versation and extended discourse, including
ulary expansion, is learning a variety of what she calls literate discourse. Blum-Kulka
sophisticated morpho-syntactic structures defines literate discourse as “include[ing] all
and how to use them flexibly for diverse those uses of language that involve elements
communicative purposes. of planning, precision, distancing, internal
We propose, then, two large categories coherence, and explicitness. It may appear
of urgent research questions. One set has to in discursive events that mainly require the
do with the developmental course of aca- skills for constructing a continuous text,
demic language and includes attention to such as public lecture or written articles, as
issues such as the following: What does nor- well as when the main requirement is con-
mative development look like? How does it versational skills . . . especially on topics that
relate to literacy development? Which early- are remote from the here-and-now” (p. 9).
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126 CATHERINE E. SNOW AND PAOLA UCCELLI

Within conversational skills, Blum-Kulka requisite to mastering academic language.


includes thematic coherence, frequency of top- Systematic linguistic variation can be dialec-
ical initiatives, capacity for regulation, cor- tal, sociolectal, ethnic, or gender-based, as
rection and metapragmatic comments (e.g., well as determined by genre, register, and
say it in baby talk), and sociolinguistic skills modality (Ravid & Tolchinsky, 2002). The
(i.e., the ability to choose a linguistic style ability to switch appropriately across lan-
appropriate to the social circumstances of guage varieties and registers depends on
the speech event). Extended discourse skills the opportunities to participate in various
comprise structural development (genre fea- communicative situations (Hymes, 1974).
tures); enrichment of linguistic means (tex- Whereas most speakers can at least par-
tual fabric, used to structure the text); tially adapt their language forms to spe-
conversational autonomy (free from conver- cific contexts, expanding these adaptation
sational scaffold from interlocutors); textual skills so that students learn how to map lan-
autonomy (ability to correctly assess the state guage forms onto a variety of situations in
of knowledge of the interlocutor so that a conscious and reflective way may be a
information in text does not assume shared crucial step in fostering academic-language
knowledge); and expansion of range of inter- proficiency. Moreover, stylistic awareness –
est, among others. that is, being aware of a set of linguistic
From a theoretical standpoint, we could options that have the potential to realize a
envision many of these early skills as founda- variety of alternative meanings – may also
tional abilities or rudimentary precursors for be necessary. Schleppegrell’s research con-
later, more sophisticated academic-language nects particular language forms with spe-
skills. cific expectations in illuminating ways. For
Research on metadiscourse (Hyland & instance, she documents how the authori-
Tse, 2004) also provides an interesting tax- tative stance typical of academic discourse
onomy of markers that might prove relevant is constructed through impersonal sub-
for the study of younger students’ oral and jects, declarative mood structure, and lex-
written academic language. Whether these ical realization of meanings; and she relates
metadiscourse elements will be sensitive to lexical density and nominalization to the
developmental changes, in addition to being function of incorporating more (ideational)
sensitive to different functions of texts, content into each clause (Schleppegrell,
is an open question that deserves further 2001).
investigation. Research on the applicability
of this taxonomy for pedagogical purposes
What Is the Effect of Mode?
is another potentially fruitful enterprise.
Further research looking at these poten- Academic language is understood as a con-
tial associations would be illuminating, both struct that goes beyond modes of expres-
to construct a comprehensive theoretical sion and disciplinary boundaries. Bailey
model and to inform the design of coherent (2007) argues for a core set of academic-
educational programs. language skills that cuts across different dis-
ciplines and is complemented with addi-
tional discipline-specific skills. Within this
What Is the Role of Metapragmatic
conceptualization, it is relevant to study
Awareness?
how different modes of expression (written
In line with the conceptualization of aca- versus oral) and skills in specific discipline-
demic language presented in Figure 7.2, we based genres (a social studies report versus a
urge research attention to the question of science-lab report) influence each other. To
whether sociolinguistic and stylistic aware- what extent skills learned in one mode of
ness plays a pivotal role in the development expression or in one genre transfer to other
of academic language. We might hypothe- domains is an important question, with rel-
size that sociolinguistic awareness is a pre- evant pedagogical implications.
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THE CHALLENGE OF ACADEMIC LANGUAGE 127

Whereas nobody would deny a bidirec- tioned in Table 7.1 should be considered to
tional influence of spoken and written lan- develop a precise picture of which skills are
guage, some researchers emphasize one side displayed under which circumstances.
as the source of more sophisticated skills.
Ravid and Tolchinsky’s (2002) intriguing
What Is the Normative Developmental
model of linguistic literacy proposes a bidi-
Course and the Ultimate Goal?
rectional influence; however, their model
states that basic features (e.g., basic syn- Teachers’ expectations and students’ skills
tax and phonology) are transferred from vary not only by grade but also by disci-
speaking to writing, whereas sophisticated pline and specific genres within disciplines.
features originate in writing and, therefore, In addition, academic-language skills can
exposure to and production of written lan- progress to reach highly sophisticated lev-
guage is the main factor in enriching linguis- els such as those used in sharing profes-
tic literacy. However, some complex fea- sional knowledge among a community of
tures might also transfer from spoken to experts. Within this range of possibilities,
written language, as Collaborative Reason- what should be considered the ideal devel-
ing studies demonstrate (Reznitskaya et al., opmental endpoint for academic-language
2001). Reznitskaya and colleagues show that development and, just as important, the
higher levels of argumentation or reason- minimal educational standards for different
ing can be achieved through the scaffold- grades and content areas?
ing of explicit discourse stratagems. To
construct a theoretical model that estab-
lishes associations or predictive relationships Teaching Academic-Language Skills
across modes of expression, research needs
Which Academic-Language Skills Should
to assess later language development so that
Be Instructed?
we can begin to understand which skills get
transferred under which conditions. Teaching about mechanisms for represent-
ing complex information – both as an ap-
proach to reading comprehension and as
Is Academic Language Truly More
an input to academic writing – could well
Grammatically Complex?
be helpful in supporting students’ devel-
Findings on syntactic complexity of aca- opment of academic-language skills. Here
demic language are not uncontroversial. again, however, the task may be primar-
Whereas many authors have pointed to ily one of expanding the learner’s reper-
a higher degree of subordination in aca- toire of useful stratagems for formulating
demic writing versus colloquial speech, oth- messages because children from their first
ers (Poole & Field, 1976) have reported more months of talking understand the challenge
embedding in spoken language. Tolchinsky of trying to express complex thoughts with
and Aparici (2000) found a higher degree limited language skills. Consider the child
of embedding in written than spoken narra- lexical forms formerly seen as overgeneral-
tives in Spanish but more frequent center- izations, such as calling the postman daddy
embedded relative clauses in subject posi- or calling horses cows; most child-language
tion in spoken than written expository texts. researchers would now argue that these are
As pointed out by Ravid and Tolchinsky simply immature attempts to comment on
(2002) and previously emphasized by Biber similarities or to refer despite lexical gaps
(1995), language features should be studied (Gelman, Croft, Fu, Clausner, & Gottfried,
taking into account the influence of register, 1998). Their occurrence suggests that even
degree of formality, and planning. In the young children can solve the problem of
study of academic-language skills, then, the expressing complex ideas, although in ways
three domains of knowledge identified in that may be unconventional and thus often
Table 7.2 and all contextual factors men- unsuccessful.
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128 CATHERINE E. SNOW AND PAOLA UCCELLI

Exposure to talking styles that display fea- specific disciplines or genres are starting
tures of academic discourse and participa- to emerge (Lemke, 1990; Schleppegrell,
tion in academic genres is probably essential Achugar, & Oteiza, 2004). For instance,
for mastering academic language. Children content-based instruction (CBI) is a ped-
who come from families that value the accu- agogy for English as a Second Language
mulation and display of knowledge for its that integrates language and content-area
own sake, who require warrants for claims, knowledge with the purpose of improving
and who model and scaffold the organiza- both dimensions within specific disciplines
tion of extended discourse and sophisticated (Schleppegrell & de Oliveira, forthcoming).
utterances will probably have a much eas- These emerging approaches are promising,
ier transition into academic language. How- yet their design and effectiveness are still in
ever, documentation of how some families need of further study. How to make the lin-
support their children’s academic-language guistic expectations explicit to students, at
skills is sorely needed. what level of precision, and how to further
For school instruction, attention to lin- develop sociolinguistic and stylistic aware-
guistic form may be a powerful mechanism ness skills to improve academic-language
for improving students’ academic-language performance in the classroom are still open
skills. A traditional grammar approach research questions.
might be effective, but the value of a discus- A related challenge is how to pro-
sion about self, audience, purpose, and the vide instruction without prescription. Many
appropriate lexical and grammatical means genre-based classroom pedagogies have
to represent information in specific school been critiqued because of their prescriptive
tasks should be ascertained. Assuming that and hierarchical nature and the low trans-
teaching grammatical and lexical devices is ferability of skills produced (Fosen, 2000;
essential, we agree with a little-cited claim Kamler, 1994). Developing students’ soci-
made by Bakhtin (1942) decades ago: olinguistic competence, stylistic awareness,
familiarity with linguistic expectations, and
Without constantly considering the stylis-
command of lexical and grammatical fea-
tic significance of grammatical choices, the
instruction of grammar inevitably turns
tures of specific genres while emphasiz-
into scholasticism. In practice, however, the ing the individual creativity required for
instructor very rarely provides any sort of an expert mastery of the interplay between
stylistic interpretation of the grammatical form and meaning is a major challenge.
forms covered in class. Every grammatical
form is at the same time a means of rep-
resenting reality. Particularly in instances
How Do Planning, Revision, and
where the speaker or writer may choose Rewriting Improve the Advancement of
between two or more equally grammat- Academic-Language Skills?
ically correct syntactic forms, the choice In a conceptualization of academic language
is determined not by grammatical but by
as a construct that cuts across modes of
representative and expressive effectiveness
of these forms. Teaching syntax without
expression, exploring the effect of editing
providing stylistic elucidation and with- as a way of fostering acquisition and aware-
out attempting to enrich the students’ own ness of academic skills seems promising.
speech does not help them improve the Whereas encouraging students to edit their
creativity of their own speech productions own texts seems to be a successful approach
(quoted in Bazerman, 2005). to improving writing skills, little research has
explored the effect of rereading and revising
on students’ learning (Klein & Olson, 2001).
What Are Effective Pedagogical
Research suggests that frequent opportuni-
Approaches?
ties for authentic writing improve the qual-
Research-based pedagogical approaches to ity of students’ written products (see Klein &
teaching academic-language skills within Olson, 2001, for a brief review). Thus, would
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THE CHALLENGE OF ACADEMIC LANGUAGE 129

frequent opportunities for editing texts have very early age (e.g., Genesee, 2005, 2006;
a positive effect on academic-language per- Genesee & Nicoladis, in press; Taeschner,
formance? If so, would the skills learned 1983) but that they become aware of the
transfer from writing to speaking? How ‘otherness’ imposed by speaking a minority
much guidance do students need so that language in public only somewhat later. Fur-
editing can effectively improve academic- thermore, understanding the relationship of
language skills? a language to an identity is rather differ-
ent from understanding how features within
a language express identity. Certainly, stu-
How Can Schools Provide Intervention in
dents do identity work through language
Academic-Language Skills to Students
in adolescence (Eckert, 1989), but it is not
Who Start Far Behind?
clear how much metalinguistic awareness
Children enter school with different linguis- they have about those linguistic decisions.
tic, sociolinguistic, and pragmatic experi- Thus, it is worth exploring whether stu-
ences, and not all of them have been exposed dents might benefit from teaching designed
to the forms of communication valued at to make the problem of self-representation
school. Strategies to make children feel com- explicit because that is a source of impor-
fortable in expressing who they are and what tant academic-language features – but, at
they bring to school should be at the core the same time, a pragmatic force to which
of any instructional program. At the same they may be blind. One approach to this task
time, schools have the moral obligation to might be sociolinguistic exploration of ques-
provide all children with equal opportuni- tions like “How does the language of people
ties to participate in the discourse of aca- in power differ from the language of those in
demics that is a requisite for later academic subordinate positions?” Another approach
success. Children’s education can be based might involve text analysis to determine, for
in their own culture while also providing example, which markers readers use to infer
explicit teaching of the skills required for the writer’s level of certainty or to decide
success in the academic context of schools whether they consider the writer trust-
(Delpit, 1995). Snow, Cancini, Gonzalez, worthy.
and Shriberg (1989) found that meeting the
expectations of a formal academic regis-
Do Students Need Instruction in
ter, such as definitional discourse, correlated
Metasociolinguistic Awareness?
with academic success. Therefore, children
who are less skillful in academic language are Another somewhat different approach
less likely to succeed at school. How to pro- would be taken if we assumed that students
vide all children – ELLs and also struggling knew the importance of linguistically
native English speakers – with equal oppor- managing self-representation but lacked a
tunities of mastering academic language in a full understanding of the cues signaling the
way that incorporates and values their pri- appropriate representation for academic
mary discourses is yet another challenge. settings. In that case, a metasociolinguistic
curriculum might be appropriate, one that
specified the factors leading to the need
How Can the Role of Language in
for greater care in representing oneself as
Self-Presentation Be Taught?
knowledgeable or trustworthy (see Table 7.1
It is not obvious that all children auto- for a preliminary list of the situations that
matically see language as a form of do/do not call for academic language). How
self-representation. Evidence from children should talking to one’s friends in class differ
growing up bilingual suggests that they from talking to them on the playground?
choose the language that is effective for How does pursuing an intellectual dispute
communication (i.e., for formulating a mes- differ from arguing with one’s boyfriend?6
sage that is likely to be successful) from a Charting students’ knowledge about these
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130 CATHERINE E. SNOW AND PAOLA UCCELLI

issues might be a research undertaking legal, medical, or business language? Ravid


worth pursuing and might shed light on and Tolchinsky (2002, p. 421) note that dis-
how to gradually bring them to deeper course varieties “can be thought of as mul-
understandings of the interactions between tidimensional spaces within which speakers
form and meaning. and writers move, and which can be defined
A related research area involves exploring at different depths of focus: for exam-
the best strategy to help students understand ple, . . . the genre of a high school physics
the importance of continuing to expand textbook versus the less specific genre of
their language knowledge. For example, natural sciences.” What should be the depth
would it be fruitful to teach teachers and/or of focus in defining academic registers? In
students explicitly about the concept of other words, should we focus on highly spe-
‘academic language’? Should we also teach cific genres, such as a laboratory report, a
students about the multidimensionality of project proposal, and a biography, or should
language – discussing, for example, how hav- we direct our efforts to clusters of genres
ing a conversation with friends requires a that share register features, such as scientific
different set of skills than a formal presenta- versus persuasive discourse?
tion? Would this knowledge be helpful and,
if so, at what level of specification? Which
purposeful activities would best help pro- Conclusion
mote this learning?
We have suggested several possible lines
of research focused on understanding the
In What Informational Context Should
origins of academic-language skill, probing
Teachers Teach Academic-Language
the differential success of different groups
Expression? of students with it and evaluating different
Studying the development of definitional approaches to helping all students master it.
skill, Snow (1990) reported no age differ- The basic question underlying all of these
ences in the amount of information chil- suggestions is one about the source of the
dren provided but significant age differences challenge: academic language, like all lin-
in “the way they organize that informa- guistic communication, involves challenges
tion into the formal structure required” (p. at the level of self-representation, represent-
708). These findings lead us to reflect about ing a message, constructing discourse, and
whether is it too much to ask of students that composing utterances. Where in this nested
they simultaneously learn content and lin- process do students encounter particular dif-
guistic organization. Should academic lan- ficulties, and are those difficulties primarily
guage perhaps be taught initially in the con- ones of understanding or of performing the
text of highly familiar topics or topics for task? If we had the answer to these ques-
which students have abundant background tions, then we would be well on our way
knowledge? to devising effective instruction for students
and professional development for teachers
to ensure universal improvement in this cru-
Which Genres Are the Most Important? cial aspect of academic functioning.
Which discourse varieties should be
included under the label “academic lan-
guage” for the purposes of improving school- Notes
relevant linguistic skills? What are the cru-
1 The authors’ names are in alphabetical order.
cial discourse varieties students need to mas- The authors would like to thank The Spencer
ter in school? Should we study mainly the Foundation, which has supported the first
language of the most traditional academic author’s work on this topic, and the Insti-
subjects, or should we also include other tute of Education Sciences, which has sup-
professional discourses, such as journalistic, ported the second author through the grants
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THE CHALLENGE OF ACADEMIC LANGUAGE 131

“Diagnostic Assessment of Reading Com- be friends, right?,” thus explicitly marking the
prehension: Development and Validation” distinction between the academic arguments
and “Improving Reading Comprehension for and the normal classroom relationships.
Struggling Readers.”
2 Register is a central notion in SFL. Register
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