ARKTESOL Springdale presentation by Elisabeth Chan of The International Center for English at Arkansas State University October 28, 2010. This presentation discusses the difference between conversation and academic English and includes tips and tricks to help students bridge the gap.

1. Elisabeth Chan
The International Center for English
Arkansas State University
ARKTESOL - October 28, 2010

2. What’s the difference?
 Magnetic attraction occurs only between
ferrous metals.
 Our experiments showed that magnets
attract some metals.
 We found out the pins stuck on the
magnet.
 Look, it’s making them move.
They don’t stick.
Gibbons (2002, p.40)

3.  Magnetic attraction occurs only between
ferrous metals.
 Our experiments showed that magnets
attract some metals.
 We found out the pins stuck on the
magnet.
 Look, it’s making them move.
They don’t stick.
Gibbons (2002, p.40)
Registers!
Non-Academic
Academic

4. Conversational vs Academic
 Cummins (1981)
 BICS – basic interpersonal
communicative skills
○ 2-3 years
 CALP – cognitive academic
language proficiency
○ 5-7 years
 Cummins’ Quadrants
 Context embedded?
 Cognitively demanding?

5. Cummins’ Quadrants
COGNITIVELY
UNDEMANDING
CONTEXT CONTEXT
EMBEDDED REDUCED
COGNITIVELY
DEMANDING

6. Academic Bag of Tricks
 How academic English is different &
Activities for building:
 Writing
 Reading
 Speaking
 Vocabulary

7. Writing
Organization
Content
Grammar

8.  ORGANIZATIONAL PATTERN
 CONTENT
 TOPIC
 SUPPORTING DETAILS
 GRAMMAR
 COMPOUND SENTENCES
 COMPLEX SENTENCES
Difference?

9. Building Academic Writing
 Teach and practice the writing process
 Focus on content
 State a topic and develop it
 Focus on cohesive paragraph structure
 Reference, conjunctions, nominalization
 Focus on sentence structure
 Compound, clauses, signal words
 Paraphrasing

10. Writing Activities
 Sentence Transformation
 Simple  compound
 Nominalizations  every day language
The police investigation of the robbery
lasted for one month.
The police investigated the robbery for
one month.

11. Writing Activities
 Sentence Transformation
 Simple  compound
 Nominalizations  every day language
 Paraphrase
 Have students pull key words from a level
appropriate academic text and then put
away the original text
 Now have students paraphrase using only
the keywords written down to help

12. Difference?

13. Building Academic Reading
 Build reading fluency through Extensive
Reading
 Engage students & increase motivation
 Explicitly teach reading skills
 Model the skills! Use “Think Alouds”

14. Reading
 Titles & Headings
 Figures
 Bold words
 Objectives
 Language!
Guessing from context!
Context-embedded +
Cognitively demanding


15. Speaking

16. Building Academic Speech
 Raise students’ awareness
 Use discussion groups with questions about differences
 Listen to lectures or speeches & analyze the language
used
 Analyze research or focus on prevalent structures
 Extend conversation
 Avoid IRE’s = Initiation, Response, Evaluation
(Cazden, 2001)

17. Speaking Activities
 Avoiding IRE’s
 Ask more open ended questions
 Respond with encouragement and in a way that extends
their response and thinking
○ T: The teacher –blank– a book to the class every week.
S: reads
T: That’s right! Why do we use “read” and not “reads”?
OR
T: Very good! What other verbs can we use?
S: gives?
T: Excellent! What is a verb we cannot use there? Why not?

18. Describe this image

19. Academic Vocabulary
 Every day vocabulary vs. Academic
(Brook, D. 1998)
 Extensive reading
 Explicitly teach vocabulary learning
strategies
 Vocabulary notebook activities
Anglo-Saxon French Latin
fear terror trepidation
win succeed triumph
holy sacred consecrated

20. Vocabulary Activities
 Note cards or Notebooks

21. Vocabulary Activities
 Note cards or Notebooks

22. References
 Arms, K. 1996. Environmental Science. Austin, TX: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
 Brook, D. 1998. The Journey of English. New York: Clarion Books.
 Cazden, C. 2001. Classroom Discourse: The Language of Teaching and Learning.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
 Cummins, J. 1981. “The Role of Primary Language Development in Promoting
Educational Success for Language Minority Students.” In Schooling and Language
Minority Students: A Theoretical Framework, 3-49. Los Angeles: Evaluation,
Dissemination and Assessment Center, California State University, Los Angeles.
 Freeman, Y.S. and D.E. Freeman. 2009. Academic Language for English Language
Learners and Struggling Readers: How to Help Students Succeed Across Content
Areas. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
 Gibbons, P. 2002. Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning: Teaching Second
Language Learners in the Mainstream Classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
 Guthrie, J. and M. Davis. 2003. “Motivating Struggling Readers in Middle School
Through an Engagement Model of Classroom Practice.” Reading and Writing Quarterly
9: 59-85.
 Swales, J. 2005. “Academically Speaking.” Language Magazine 4 (8): 30-34.
 Scholastic. Magnetic Attraction. http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=1227. Accessed
October 5, 2010.
 POS Hardware. International Point of Sale Cash Registers.
http://www.internationalpointofsale.com/store/index.php?cPath=84. Accessed October 5, 2010.
Image Citations

23. QUESTIONS?
CONTACT INFO
Elisabeth Chan
echan@astate.edu
http://www.astate.edu/international/tice
The International Center for English
Arkansas State University