features of academic language - full text...

Features of Academic LanguageExcerpted from: Zwiers, Jeff. Building Academic Language: Essential Practices for Content Classrooms. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008.

I. Nominalization

Another academic grammar tool is nominalization, which means turning verbs or adjectives into noun phrases that then become the subject or object in a clause or phrase. The purpose of nominalization is to condense what can often amount to lengthy explanations into a few words. Examples include revolution, refraction, personification, cancellation and renunciation. Another example is the word nominalization itself. (It is a nominalization of the process of nominalizing.) Nominalization essentially “allows a lot of information to be packed into the Theme/Subject position which otherwise needs a whole clause to express” (Harvey, 1993, p. 36).

What this means for students is that they need to process more ideas per clause, often with increased levels of abstraction. For example, the sentence The condemnation of dissenting perspectives led to revolution contains three abstract nominalizations: condemnation, perspectives and revolution. Students must fit the complex meanings of all three words into their heads, while also putting them together in the sentence. Nominalization is one of many ways in which academic language describes abstract processes, concepts and relationships between ideas that are too complex or abstract to show with images or movement (Dutro & Moran, 2003). And without extra support and practice in compact language such as nominalization, many students fail to comprehend the main points of challenging texts, especially students who lack practice with mainstream English (Snow & Brinton, 1997).

For example, a common practice is to begin a sentence with a condensed description of information from the previous sentence. This compressed information usually takes the form of a noun phrase through the process of nominalization; for example, The virus adapted to survive outside the body. This mutation allowed it to be passed on by casual contact. The word mutation is a nominalized version of the action in the preceding sentence. Academic texts condense sentences, paragraphs, and even chapters, requiring the reader not only to understand what was condensed but also to quickly incorporate it into background knowledge in order to then use it as the subject of the current argument. The main purpose of nominalization in many scientific texts is to develop chains of reasoning that lead clearly from one conceptual step to the next (Schleppegrell, 2004).

Nominalizations challenge the reader to keep track of multiple abstract relationships throughout an academic text. The referents this and these are often followed by a nominalization and more information about it in the rest of the sentence. This cycle builds as each new idea is condensed into a nominalization. (I just did this with This cycle.) Consider the following example of the use of referents, which are italicized:

Many alloys are made by melting metals and mixing them together in carefully measured amounts. Since the beginning of the Bronze Age, this technique has been used to make copper alloys. Some modern alloys are made by mixing the elements as powders and then heating them under high pressure. This process uses less energy because the metals blend at lower temperatures [Padilla, 2001, p.644].

The following section is excerpted from Gibbons, Pauline. English Learners Academic Literacy and Thinking. Portsmouth: Heinemann (2009).

Increasingly, as students move through high school, they are expected to use nominalization in their writing to demonstrate that they understand the more abstract concepts in these subjects. The process of nominalization is typical of much written language, because it is very often the general concept or phenomenon we want to talk about, rather than the people and processes around a specific event. The ability to use nominalization generally develops very late in children’s language use. Research has suggested that most native English-speaking students do not systematically use this in their writing until they are about 12 or 13 years old (Derewianka, 2003). (And some people may never learn to control it fully, which is one reason even some adults’ writing may sound less “sophisticated” or “wordy”.) For EL learners, learning to manipulate language in this quite complex way is an even bigger challenge.

Examples of Different Types of NominalizationVERBS (name what is happening)

educaterefracterodeclearchangedestroypollute

NOUNS (name things or concepts)

educationrefractionerosionClearingDevelopmentDestructionpollution

CONJUNCTION

The driver lost his license because he was driving too fast.There was a famine because of the drought.

NOUN

The reason for the driver’s losing his license was his driving speed.The drought was the cause of the famine.

ADJECTIVE

The resources were very scarce so the school was closed.

NOUN

The scarcity of the resources resulted in the closure of the school.

WHOLE CLAUSE/SENTENCE

The drought was very long and so many people starved.

The length of the drought caused mass starvation.

Figure 3.3. Turning Various Words and Groups of Words into Nouns (Gibbons p. 52)It is often necessary to first learn a new technical word before it is possible to create a

nominalization or general concept. For example, it isn’t easy to nominalize a non technical or “everyday” term such as spread out in this sentence from a science text: Water waves spread out through a small opening. (We would have to talk about the spreading out of water waves.) However, if we replace spread out with the more technical disperse, it becomes possible to talk about dispersion. It is important not to provide ELs with only simplified texts that avoid the academic nominalized forms of words, but rather to help guide them towards the understanding of those words by:

● Going from familiar, everyday, and concrete to the subject specific, unfamiliar, and abstract.

● Using concrete examples that are familiar to students and that link to their own real-world and out of school experiences.

● Using familiar language to talk about these experiences before moving to more specialized subject language.

● Sequencing teaching and learning activities in such a way that you move toward the specialized language of the written texts students will read rather than beginning with the written texts (i.e. begin with an experiential or hands-on activity that introduces students to the ideas and concepts behind the complex words first).

Possible Activities to Get Students Comfortable with Nominalization

Activity 1. Everyday language, academic language, and picture matching. You could write some of the sentences from the text that use some of the nominalized forms you are most interested in having students learn and remember (the “bricks”) on one set of cards. On another set of cards, write the same sentences using everyday language (without nominalized forms) and get students to match the two together. They can then underline the key nominalized forms on one set of cards and their corresponding every day language forms on the other.

Academic Language Sentence Social Language SentencesThe extended drought caused the crops to fail, resulting in a widespread famine and many deaths, especially among the children and the elderly.

There was no rain for a very long time. The farmers had planted crops like maize and wheat and corn. But it didn’t rain for a long time. So all the crops died. There was no food, so the people had nothing to eat. They became very hungry. They didn’t have enough to eat. Many of them died, especially the children and old people.

Activity #2 Barrier Crossword. Assign one student to be in charge of all of the “across” words and the other to be responsible for the “down” words. The crossword puzzle will be completed only with the nominalized form of the words. The student in charge of the “down” words has the every day language for the across words and the nominalized forms of the across words. The student in charge of the “across” words has the opposite. Have ach student read the every day language clues to his/her partner and have the partner choose the correct nominalized form to fill in the blank until the entire crossword puzzle is completed.

Other activities:● Have students rewrite sentences that use nominalized forms into sentences that use verbs

instead.● Once they have learned what the concepts mean, give students practice rewriting

sentences using the correct nominalized forms of the target words (“bricks”).


II. Long SentencesUnlike informal language, which uses a variety of linking strategies such as intonation

and pace to create a coherent message, academic texts tend to be complex in their organization of clauses and phrases. Each message that we read or hear is essentially a series of clauses strung together. Each clause, which is a chunk of words, represents relationships, experiences, or ideas. Each clause links with previous and subsequent clauses, building up the intended message (Schleppegrell, 2004). Of course, the clauses, their links, and their presentation all depend on the people involved, the purpose, and the setting.

Long sentences often have multiple clauses. Consider this sentence from the Federalist Papers:

This idea admits not of precise demonstration, because there is no rule by which we can measure the momentum of civil power necessary to the government of any given number of individuals; but when we consider that the island of Britain, nearly commensurate with each of the supposed confederacies, contains about eight millions of people, and when we reflect upon the degree of authority required to direct the passions of so large a society to the public good, we shall see no reason to doubt that the like portion of power would be sufficient to perform the same task in a society far more numerous [Hamilton, 1787].

Notice the length of the sentence, the embedded clauses between commas, and the overall cognitive load the reader must bear to process it. Long sentences demand that readers or listeners fit more words and thinking into their heads. Students must be trained to quickly and automatically break down long sentences and to process and interpret the clauses. They must recognize what is subordinate and, more important, what is the main point of the sentence in the main clause. Subordination is a hard-to-use tool because it represents hierarchical relationships between clauses. For example, in the sentence Although several precautions were taken, the key was lost, the first clause modifies the second, more important clause. Extra clauses, of course, mean extra things to think about in one sentence. Many subordinate clauses begin with words such as although, because, before, if and despite. We can train students to recognize these words and organize their thoughts accordingly.

Possible Activities for Helping Students to Understand Long Sentences

Activity 1: Marking Up Long Sentences (Zwiers, 2010)We need to build up students’ mental muscles to handle longer sentences in every content area. One way to do this is to analyze and identify key parts of sentences and clauses (Schleppegrell & de Oliveira). The point is not to teach grammar per se but to help students focus on meaning. Every part of a sentence has a purpose and there is usually a hierarchy of importance for what the writer wants to communicate. There is a main subject and main action or condition, and the rest of the sentence supports these or connects the sentence to other sentences. The key parts of the sentence often include:

● Main participant/subject/actor● Main process/verb phrase and its object/receiver

In other words, much of the time readers are asking, What is doing what to what? Or What is what and why? To improve the ability to answer these questions with long sentences, readers can use different types of underlines, fonts, or circles to mark the parts they want to emphasize.

Key for Symbols● Bold words are the main subject, ● underlined words are the main verb phrase, ● italicized words are contradictory ideas, and ● [bracketed words] are cause and effect phrases.)

Example 1It was so quiet [that she could hear the creak of buggy wheels receding far down the lane toward the road], and the voices of the girls surprisingly clear and close-seeming, though they must have been almost a half mile away.

Example 2 [To decide whether the graph of an equation is a function, perform the vertical line test]—if a vertical line crosses the graph more than once, the graph is not a function because the x value of the vertical line is associated with more than one y-value].Example 3 We the people of the United States, [in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity], do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.Activity 1a. The above can also be done by color coding a sentence For example, students can mark contradictions (however) in red, causal links (this makes, as a result) in green and so on. In math texts, for example, there are many cases where authors use to and if. One might see “To determine….” , “to calculate….., and “If the coefficient is 2,” “If the value does not exceed…” “If the radicals are different.”, and so on. When they see if, they color it and look for the condition that connects to it.

Activity 2: Comprehend Aloud—Teacher puts section of the text on the overhead and reads it aloud to students, explaining as he/she goes how he/she breaks the larger section into chunks and finds the main point of the sentence. Students can then work on doing the same thing in small groups.

Activity 3: Sentence Puzzle: Cut up a few long sentences from a text and have students reconstruct the sentences based on their knowledge of the ideas and the relationships between the different parts of the sentence.Activity 4: Use Nursery Rhymes. Take a nursery rhyme such as “This is the dog,That worried the cat,That killed the rat,That ate the maltThat lay in the house that Jack built. “and have students mark up connections to demonstrate who is doing what to what.

Activity 5Social and Academic language sentence matching (see p. 14 of your Let’s Give ‘em Something to Talk About” language activities resource). You could write some of the longer, trickier academic sentences from the text they are reading on one card and everyday language sentences (most likely several short sentences) on another card, and get them to match the two together.

Academic Language Sentence Social Language SentencesThe extended drought caused the crops to fail, resulting in a widespread famine and many deaths, especially among the children and the elderly.

There was no rain for a very long time. The farmers had planted crops like maize and wheat and corn. But it didn’t rain for a long time. So all the crops died. There was no food, so the people had nothing to eat. They became very hungry. They didn’t have enough to eat. Many of them died, especially the children and old people.


III. Conditionals with ModalsAn academic speaker or writer often attaches a modal verb to change the meaning. For example, in the sentence “The people could look for shelter elsewhere”, the modal “could” alters the meaning of the sentence considerably. Other modals include would, can, will, shall, might, may, must, should, and ought to. Speakers and writers use these to convey such nuances in meaning as intent, obligation, ability, probability, permission, possibility, and conditionality. English learners often have difficulty sorting out the subtle shades of meaning conveyed by modal verbs and may deliver a stronger or weaker message than intended. Furthermore, many English learners find modals difficult because they do not have modal verbs in their first language.

The important modal would is often used in conditional statements. Conditional statements (If……would, If….then) allow a student to consider situations beyond personal experience through the use of predictions, cause and effect inferences, and hypotheses. Such hypotheses give students a chance to visualize and generate logical, but yet unproven, connections between ideas. Consider the use of these modals in the following content areas:

● For the scientific method (If I were to add this to the mixture, what would happen? If we cool this solution, then will it form a precipitate?)

● For alternate possibilities in history (What would have happened if the Germans had repelled the invasion? If a firestorm hadn’t destroyed the palace, then perhaps China would have colonized the world.)

● In narrative interpretations (How would you feel if you were in her shoes? If the character had been a woman, would the people have respected her less?)

● In math problem solving (If we put a zero in the denominator, what would happen? Could we solve this if gravity were not a constant?).

A student who hears the conditional needs to be able to logically connect the if clause with the would clause by using cause and effect thinking. This is a difficult task for some English learners because the verb tense does not always match the meaning. For example, if they went to Spain appears to be in the past tense, but actually refers to something that has not happened or may never happen.

Possible Activities to Use to Develop Students’ Comfort with Modals● Lots of practice: Understanding and thinking about counterfactual arguments (what

would have happened if….) are wonderful for developing thinking skills so provide students with many opportunities to engage in these!

● Sentence Matching: Provide students with cards that contain if statements and cards that contain would statements and get them to assemble the sentences together making logical connections. This can also be done with causes and effects.

● Ordering Modals: Provide students with the same sentence expressed with different modal verbs (should, must, could, ought, will etc.) and ask them to put them in order of forcefulness or likelihood.

Sentence Scrambles: Cut up a series of sentences that use modal verbs correctly and ask students to reassemble (each sentence can have a different font or different color).


IV. Passive VoiceIn academic talk and writing, a common verb structure is the passive voice, which is used

when the focus is on the objects or persons affected by the action rather than on the actor. Academic English, for example, uses passive voice much more than everyday English uses it. This is particularly true in Science (Lemke, 1990) and mathematics (Spanos et al., 1988). Passive voice tends to place more emphasis on the object than on the subject. Often, the subject is never named. For example, in “the radius is then plugged into the formula for the area of a circle”, there is no subject. Notice how normal and straightforward this seems to us; we automatically know that the radius is a number that is manipulated by someone – anyone – who knows how to do the math.

A challenge for many English learners, though, is that their languages have no passive voice. Learners may confuse the actor with the object of the action. For example, a learner might think that the cells are doing the removing in the clause the cells are then removed from the slide. And then, even when students do begin to understand passive construction, it takes more time for them to be able to use it in speech and writing (Coelho, 2004).

Possible Activities for Teaching Passive Voice● Change sentences from passive to active and vice-versa.● Look at a series of test prompts in your content area from standardized exams. Passive voice

is often used in test prompts—help students to interpret what the question is asking and change the passive voice into active.

● Sentence puzzle activity—cut up passive and active sentences and have students work together to jointly construct them, reflecting on how each type of sentence is put together.

● Matching activity—write sentences on cards in passive voice and corresponding set of sentences in active voice and have students match the two.

Take Note: Gibbons (2009) points out that it is important to teach ELLs in ways that help them to see the function and meaning of language, not just the form and structure. Simply having students turn active sentences into passive ones and vice versa is pointless if it is not related to context and meaning. Instead, one could do this exercise in the context of teaching students about designing scientific investigations because the students need to use the passive voice in their reports. Students could spend time locating passive voice forms in a model report, talk about why formal report writing in science does not contain references to the people who carry out the experiments, and how the passive voice allows us to do this (Gibbons, 2009).


V. Using Figurative ExpressionsFigurative expressions are often used to describe abstract concepts. Figurative language includes metaphors, analogies, idioms, and other terms that use concrete and common ideas to describe abstract concepts and relationships. They are often found in works of literature, but occur more commonly than we think in articles, letters, speeches, lectures, and academic texts. The following are examples of the types of expressions that may be used in a classroom:

Boils down toSidestep the issueRead between the linesOn the right trackSet the stageOn the same page

It is possible for English language learners, if not supported in understanding these figurative terms, to get so confused that they will not understand the messages. Cliches tend to be closely bound to particular cultures and rarely make sense when literally translated into another language. Many academic texts use clichés, which are expressions that have been used so much that the original idea or image isn’t even present in the mind of the speaker or writer (e.g. grasp the concept, shed light on the subject). We must teach such terms and the thinking that supports them to students so that they may also be able to use them.

Notice the figurative descriptions of abstract ideas in the following paragraph from an educational article:

As we stand on the threshold of a pluralist future, it will be important to hold a steady gaze on the belief that exemplary biliteracy programs will embody more than a focus on teaching the mental processes of reading. Rather, the potential is great for multi-pronged efforts with many layers of goals. In addition to nurturing the cognitions of reading, educators will be afforded the opportunity to use literacy lessons to better assist acculturation by helping various ethnic communities to understand, know, and respect the multiplicity of heritages (Fitzgerald et al., 2000, p. 520).

Ultimately the ability to use figurative language allows students to construct theories, explanations, and abstract concepts by expressing everyday language in specialized ways. When students become fluent in this type of thinking and start using the language for their own messages—and even inventing them on their own—then they will be able to perform better in academic settings.

Activities for Helping Students Develop the Ability to Understand and Use Figurative Language

Activity 1: Matching activity where figurative expressions are written on one card and the literal expression is written on another and students need to match the two.

Activity 2: Write an original piece/Scenarios. Provide students with a few figurative expressions and ask them to compose a paragraph, song or story in which all are used. Alternatively, as a review of the expressions, compose several scenarios leaving blanks for the different target figurative expressions and have students fill in the blanks accordingly.

Activity 3: Figuring Out the Figurative (excerpted from Zwiers, 2008). In this activity, adapted from the Analogical Study Guide (Bean, Singer & Cowen, 1985), students get much-needed practice in interpreting the many figurative and double-meaning expressions that are present in academic texts and talk. This is often done while reading, but it can be done any time a rich expression emerges during a lesson (or outside of school, too). Students find a figurative expression, figure out why the author used it, and consider its origin (see Table 7.3). They make a chart in their notebooks and then explain the figuratives to one another. As a class you can discuss the most important expressions and put them on a large chart up on the wall.

This is a fairly quick way to build students’ figurative and abstract language abilities when comprehending expository texts. It encourages students to be on the lookout for figurative expressions, even – especially – in science, math and history classes. These disciplines are “filled to the brim” with such expressions, many of which we tend to take for granted.

Table 7.3Sample Chart for Figuring

Out FigurativesExpressions in Context Why the Author Used It;

What is MeansOrigin

He didn’t want to burn all of his bridges yet.

He wanted to show how the character broke off relationships that could later help him.

In war, armies would burn bridges so they couldn’t be followed, but later they might want to use them.

Sow the seeds of revolution. The people were doing many little things that would get others to rise up against the government.

Sow small seeds that grow into crops

Expressions in Context Why the Author Used It;What is Means

Origin

Not even light can escape gravity’s powerful grip in the black hole.

She wanted to show how strong the gravity is in a black hole.

A strong animal tries to escape from the hands of someone who is stronger.

The root can sometimes be irrational.

The term is used to show that a number can go on forever without ending or repeating.

Rational means logical, and irrational means illogical, without a pattern.

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