Category: Academic Language
While many multilingual students gain social language in two years, abstract, highly structured academic language requires much more time. Tan Huynh advocates teaching MLs at the sentence level because it facilitates understanding of content and fosters academic writing skills.
You don’t have to be an ELA teacher to teach academic content to English learners. The goal is to guide students in using language “like an expert in a particular field would use it,” writes Tan Huynh, who shares a 4-step process used by international consultant Beth Skelton.
For English learners, academic language is much more challenging to master than social language. Specialist Valentina Gonzalez says EL students need “massive opportunities” on a daily basis to practice using content-specific words and phrases. She shares 10 techniques.