Figure 1.1 depicts the four uses of academic language that form DARE and frame this book.
Figure 1.1 Key Uses of Academic Language
Key uses of academic language are a focal point for organizing and promoting student interaction with content and with one another. In this chapter, we identify the linguistic features of each key use and point to how these defining characteristics are useful indicators of different genres across school disciplines. We use the term genre in this context to refer to the socially constructed ways in which we communicate for academic purposes. Examples of written genres in college and career readiness (CCR) standards in which key uses of academic language are strongly embedded, for example, include narrative, argumentative, and informational text. To guide our conversation, we invite teachers to take the DARE and do the following:
Discuss the concept of academic language use and its connection to academic achievement
Argue for DARE as a conceptual tool to enhance educators’ focus on academic language use in planning curriculum, assessment, and instruction
Recount the individual and collective features of key uses of academic language
Explain how to highlight key uses of academic language across different contexts and activities
As we explore DARE-specific key uses of academic language, it is important to note that these are not the only purposes for language use in school. We have created these umbrella categories to ease educators into the practice of thinking about language use and its power when engaging in teaching complex academic concepts.
Explore
When students go to school, they engage in many activities, from making friends, to negotiating meaning, to sharing what they know and how they know it. Language facilitates students’ participation in all of these activities. The term academic language has been historically used to describe the processing and production of language used to share concepts, ideas, and information of the disciplines in school contexts (Bailey, 2007; Feldman & Kinsella, 2008; Gottlieb & Ernst-Slavit, 2014; Schlepegrell, 2004). In this book, we propose extending this definition to encompass all school-related activities in which students participate. When students interact with peers or their teachers and are involved in complex thinking, they do not necessarily use discipline-specific language, even though they may be using language for academic purposes. Such language can also be used to problem-solve, to collaborate, or to promote social justice. In other words, language use in schools does not fit into a traditional dichotomy of social and academic language. Language use is multifaceted, as the interaction among the contexts, participants, and activities that take place in school is complex and varied (Gee, 2004; Holland, 2005). This complexity is what we try to encapsulate in the term academic language.
Academic language, defined from a broader perspective as a means for students to engage in school, includes social interaction, making meaning, and accessing academic content. Many students who enter our classrooms bring with them experiences and ways of knowing and learning about the world that may differ from those described in challenging academic standards. As educators, one of our roles is to create connections between the two so that all students have the tools needed to meaningfully participate in learning. Making these connections with each and every student is one of the ways we can work toward equity in our classrooms.
Take the DARE
Reflect on or discuss with colleagues the role of language use in your school.
1 What opportunities do students have to use academic language every day?
2 How is language modeled in your school?
3 What models for language use exist in your classroom?
4 How do students and teachers use language with each other?
5 Is there an expectation for academic language use in your school? How is it conveyed?
6 Are students who are knowledgeable of multiple languages able to maximize their academic language use by being invited to communicate in more than one language?
Apply
A Rationale for Key Uses for Academic Language
As we have mentioned, in school, language serves as the vehicle for communicating ideas, information, and knowledge; it is also the tool for interacting with others as we learn new skills and engage in content area practices. The ultimate goal of this multiyear project initiated at WIDA, Wisconsin Center for Education Research, University of Wisconsin–Madison, was to support teachers’ focus on oral and written language use in their content classrooms and to promote collaboration among teachers around the role of language in learning.
We shared the array of language uses we unearthed from extensive reviews of literature, examination of state academic content standards, analysis of instructional materials, and interaction occurring in classrooms with experts in the field of linguistics and language education, our colleagues, and practitioners. After arranging the many reasons for communicating (that is, identifying language functions, such as describe, compare and contrast, defend, and state) into categories, four key uses of academic language emerged as the most salient purposes. Having secured evidence from multiple data sources, we felt confident that the key uses of academic language would indeed help teachers and school leaders better grasp the important role of language in their disciplinary practices.
At first, three main academic purposes for language use were identified: argue, recount, and explain. A fourth key use, discuss, was added to highlight the increased attention to oral discourse, collaborative learning settings, and targeted interaction among students in today’s classrooms. In our book, we make an acronym from these four overarching purposes for communication—discuss, argue, recount, and explain—DARE. We think that DARE serves our intent well, as we wish to challenge educators in consciously and intentionally infusing these key uses of academic language into teaching and learning. In DARE-ing educators, we hope that key uses of academic language can serve as a conceptual tool and an entry point for deeper conversations within and across the disciplines.
To make the terms more tangible, we use the following definitions for DARE:
Discuss: To interact with others or with content as a means of negotiating meaning, cocreating new knowledge, or sharing information.
Argue: To give opinions with reasons, make claims backed by evidence, or debate topics with the intent of persuading others.
Recount: To inform others; recall experiences or events; or display knowledge, information, or ideas.
Explain: To make ideas, situations, or issues clear through how or why; to account for cause or effect; or to describe complex relationships by providing details or facts.
Language Functions and Their Relation to Key Uses of Academic Language
Each key use is broad in nature and encompasses various language functions descriptive of how we use language. Language functions help us organize how we speak or write around a message; in that way, language functions help us organize discourse and encompass specific sentence features that are part of the way we define academic language use (Gottlieb & Ernst-Slavit, 2014). Academic language functions refer to the purpose of language use or, put more simply, why we use language to communicate—how we might wish to identify, clarify, or paraphrase (among others) concepts and ideas.
Language functions often trigger specific discourses and types of sentences. For example, we use language to describe characters in a story, to compare two approaches to solving problems, or to ask questions about an event. Describe, compare, and ask questions are examples