What is Academic Language?

Academic language is tricky to define. Common definitions include language used in learning settings, or it is defined by a set of “distinctive lexical, morphological, syntactic and stylistic features” (Bauman & Graves 2010 p 5). These can be problematic given their self referential and abstract nature. These sorts of definitions also call for gatekeepers, academics to come up with what is and what isn’t academic language, often as an empirical list of linguistic specificities. (Flores 2020, p 24) In an attempt to find ways to bypass gatekeepers and lists of “dos and don’ts” I offer my own definition of academic language:

Academic language is a mode of speaking, writing and reading that seeks to communicate specific information precisely and concisely with a particular audience in mind.

My definition may seem basic and non-specific, but I believe it captures the essence of what academic language really is and I believe it is helpful in assisting teachers focus in on what is important about the way reading, writing, and speaking can be taught. I prefer this more open ended definition out of hope that it can avoid getting too caught up in lexical, morphological, syntactic and stylistic specifics, which in turn can lead to teaching a code as opposed to teaching something that is both practical and useful in the long run and in a myriad of settings and situations.

When attempting to define academic language with more specificity than I offer above there is a tendency for gatekeepers to emerge. These gatekeepers can easily confuse the true needs regarding academic language with culturally specific language, often language used by middle and upper class white communities. This can disadvantage minority communities and ostracizes specific ways of speaking and communicating as wrong or something that needs to be corrected. It puts extra work on communities that are sometimes already at disadvantages systemically, and makes it easier for the communities that already use language like this to succeed. Again, it becomes almost a type of in-group speak or code instead of working towards effective communication.

To me the key is effective communication, and there are many styles and tones and modes that can be used to meet this goal, to limit any student’s personal voice might even stifle a student’s interest in writing or speaking.

Of course precision and clarity are very important, and as a teacher, this is what I hope for my students, and what I try to teach. The first step should always be comprehension, but once a student understands what they are learning, picking writing strategies that they will help them with efficiency is always a goal of mine.

Knowing the audience is also very important, and helping students understand who they are writing to will allow them to be more effective communicators. Lets say a piece of writing will be submitted to the local paper as an op-ed piece, then knowing the audience and what will catch their attention is important. Lets say the audience is other students within a specific subject, using vocabulary they are familiar with will not only import a sense of competence, but a specificity as well. Say the audience is the local congressperson, then brevity and clarity and a clear connection to their work becomes important. If one was writing a letter to the paleontologist at the local museum, then avoiding slang terms would probably go a long way.

It is so easy to get lost trying to define academic language, but keeping in mind what will help students the most to become effective communicators leads to what I believe is more meaningful and lasting education. I believe my definition captures this.

What is Disciplinary Language?

As a High School science teacher, there is another important aspect to teaching writing, reading and speaking. The scientific community (and really just about every academic discipline) has very specific ways of writing and speaking. These can be highly specialized and individualized. Within science, the language used not only changes across disciplines like biology and chemistry and physics, but also within sub disciplines like medical physics, particle physics or astrophysics. Disciplinary language emerges around a community of academics, and develops over years of reading each others publications. In many cases it is a language all its own. Disciplinary language can be practically unintelligible across disciplines. In Science, I can muddle my way through a journal article on evolution or ecology, but would be lost reading an organic chemistry journal or astrophysics journal.

What does this mean for High School Science teachers? It could be enticing to think that our job is to teach students how to effectively read science journals, but the writing is often dry, technical and passive. Would reading a journal article spark interest in what they are studying? Would it give them the tools needed to communicate effectively beyond the classroom? Is reading a journal article a skill they will need beyond completion of the course? For the most part, the answer is no. Yes, there are a few students in every class that will go on to study science in higher education, and some might even go on to get PhDs and become full fledged scientists, but my own education, and conversations with friends, have led me to understand that disciplinary language will be taught to them as them specialize and move up in academia. Even if, at the High School level, a teacher would be able to help a student become fluent in a specific disciplinary language, there are so many possible disciplines that there is no guarantee that the student would be able to use that specific language ever again. As a result, I do not believe it is the job of a High School teacher to teach super specific disciplinary language, as it can often be just as challenging as teaching a foreign language, and a lot less useful.

So what is the role of a science teacher in relation to scientific writing. Science is both a process of inquiry and an ongoing conversation about the data found through that process of inquiry. As I have already mentioned, the professional conversations are not particularly useful to teach, but that does not mean there is no room to teach not only the process of inquiry, but the process of evaluation as well.

Highly scaffolded short journal articles could be introduced to help students understand this larger process of communication that occurs within science. Newspaper articles can be used to highlight how that research makes its way into the larger culture. Magazines like Scientific America can be used to help summarize trends in research and help students better understand the emerging edges of scientific research. These can excite students and draw them into the larger body of science without having to teach them a completely new language. One job of a science teacher is to familiarize students with enough science background so that they can make informed decisions when voting on policy. A goal of science class is to generate informed citizens that have enough scientific literacy to weigh the pros and cons of given proposals that can effect not only them, but future generations. Although most students will never pick up a copy of Nature, nearly all of them should be able to read a newspaper article about climate change.

Beyond this, even at the elementary and middle school level, there are genres within Science (Donovan & Coleman 2018). I think when getting into teaching ways to effectively communicate within the realm of science, it is important to remember why we teach science in schools in the first place. Many students will not go on to STEM careers, but we still require science through at least 10th grade. Science helps students learn how to analyze problems and explore possible solutions within an established structure. Learning the various genres within science writing and reading will help give students opportunities to not only practice these problem solving skills, but to better understand them. Students need to be able to put into practice what they are learning, and writing about those experiences and processes helps cement that learning in their brain. Genres include informational reports, procedural write ups, writings that offer explanations and arguments—where scientific claims are supported by evidence. Whether a student every goes on to write a journal article is unimportant when learning these various genres, but through practice they will learn important skills that will help them write more concisely and with precision. They will become more effective communicators.

In a conversation I had recently with a physicist, which you can read here, he pointed out the highly specialized nature of disciplinary language within science, and how it often limited the ability of scientists to work more collaboratively outside their specific fields. He hopes that the language of science can shift towards more universal norms so that the cross fertilization of ideas can happen more readily. Maybe it is not possible to effectively teach a specific disciplinary language when it comes to science, but can High School Science teachers get future scientists to challenge the silos disciplinary language can create?

The special Case of Science Education

I have already outlined some of the differences between academic language and disciplinary language and how they effect science education, but what really is the goal of a science educator when it comes to teaching literacy and language. There are a lot of science teachers that feel that literacy and language is the job of an english teacher, and that science teachers are there to do labs and blow stuff up. But the reality is that effective science education finds a balance between the ways I have outlined academic language and disciplinary language. If one goes back to the earlier idea of academic language as a way of writing effectively through precision and knowing the audience, then science literacy has a lot to offer in terms of developing that skill. At the same time, by seeping students in at least mid-level disciplinary language (i.e. Scientific American or National Geographic) students develop an ability to at least understand the role science plays in policy development and technological advancement. And this all takes practice. Here are a few ideas that can help find this balance.

What do students read? Remembering that scientific writing will be nearly unreadable and uninteresting to the vast majority of students, and remembering that we want to help students find their own voices while learning to communicate effectively (as opposed to learning a code), what would it look like to throw in a science fiction novel that is rooted in good science, Andy Weir’s the Martian comes to mind as a narrative with plenty of jumping off points for exploring real scientific questions. And what do students not read? Check out this link to a video I made discussing the text book I use in my own Earth Science class. As I discuss in the video, students clearly need to learn the specific language of the regents exam, and that particular textbook has lots of opportunities to practice that language, but the rest of the book is downright poorly written, and can confuse students learning to avoid the passive voice in english class or who are being taught to engage their audience in a social studies class. Instead of relying on that text, coming up with a quad text set that might include a chapter from the text book, but that also an article from a website like space.com and a video from Neil Degrasse Tyson and an excerpt from either a science fiction book or a biography of a scientist or astronaut. (for more on quad text sets see Lewis & Strong 2021, p 80) Just like with learning a foreign language, the more a student reads in that language, the more they will understand, and the more broadly a student reads, the more clearly they will be able to find their own voice.

What do students write? Historically lab report are the bread and butter of science writing: highlighting the hypothesis, reviewing research, outlining the procedure and offering a conclusion. As I referred to early, this is certainly a genre of science writing, and practicing it will most certainly help students become more effective communicators, specifically around building arguments using evidence, but is it the only thing students should be writing in a science class? No, not at all. Again, if we take the finding of balance between academic language and disciplinary language, while helping students find their own voice, there is all sorts of writing students can do in a science room. To follow up from reading, comprehension is key, and research has shown one of the best practices for ensuring comprehension of a text is to write a summary (Lewis & Strong 2021 p 217). Lewis & Strong highlight a number of research supported techniques to improve summary writing, those strategies can also help students find their own voices. One strategies is to use magnet summaries, where a student finds one word that makes its way throughout the text and then come up with attractor words for each paragraph or section. Once this is done they can craft individual sentences and form a complete summary of the text. Another fun summarizing strategy is using a RAFT strategy, where students are given a Role to take on, and Audience to write to, a Form of writing to engage in and a specific Topic to write about. If students just read a text about climate change, maybe the role they take on is concerned citizen, where the audience is a the town board the form is a letter or speech on the topic of what the town needs to do to address the specific issue highlighted in the text they just read. This also gives students a tie-in from a science lesson to the larger community. I also think it is important for students to engage in regular low stakes writing so they don’t feel stressed about what they are writing and can learn to enjoy the process of writing. One of the things I would love to implement in my own classroom is a science journal, where students can reflect on what they have learned, respond to essential questions, and even communicate with their teacher. Since so much of science is observing and recording data, the journals can be that place for low stakes practice and develop the sorts of habits that may end up helping them in whatever career path they choose.

Secondary to this question is the reality that students need to be able to not only interpret data charts and graphs and various models, but create them. When it comes to picking texts, it could be important to include these sorts of data rich texts, but I think even more important is giving students lots of opportunities to create their own sorts of data rich texts. What does it look like to gather class wide data and craft an expression of that, or to play with creating various models and see how they hold up when presented to the class as a whole. This is an important aspect of scientific literacy that can not be skipped or ignored, and using inquiry to help develop this skill can go a long way.

What do students say? Academic and disciplinary language certainly does not stop at the written word. How students speak is also important. Although it certainly extends beyond just speaking, helping students learn how to ask really deep probing questions is one of the best things that can happen in a science classroom. Although reading and writing and engaging in inquiry based curriculum all help with this, the way students speak with one another helps too. Offering prompting questions and opportunities for turn and talks, conversation starters and question stems, these all get students practicing asking each other questions. During reading times, allowing students to come up with attractor words as part of the magnet summary strategy gets them thinking together. And having them regularly report in front of the class on findings that might be apart of a jigsaw activity so that they can display their own gained expertise and build confidence in their public speaking. Teacher modeling that leads to effective classroom discussions also can lead to developing these skills. When facilitating a classroom discussion, a few things are key: open ended questions, authority is shared between teacher and students, there is enough time given for peer interaction, a topic is clearly stated and all participants are familiar with the discussion norms and rules. (Lewis & Strong p 186). Creating a class culture of discussion and question asking and even risk taking will lead to students who will be better prepared to communicate effectively beyond high school.

Reflecting on the Standards. As mentioned above, helping student become proficient with the various genres of science language is a key part of science education. When one looks to the New York State science standards, one begins to see the wider scope of scientific language embedding everywhere. I could make a very exhaustive list, but some examples include phrases like: “communicate scientific and technical information about…” HS-PS2-6, “analyze data to support the claim…” HS-PS3-6, “construct an explanation based on evidence that…” HS-LS4-4, “communicate scientific ideas about…” HS-ESS1-3, “construct an argument based on evidence about…” HS-ESS2-8. Again, I could go on, I found 26 different standards that included some aspect of science specific literacy/language, but these exemplify the standards’ commitment to incorporating a broader view of science specific academic language, embracing the idea of learning how to structure scientific language, in a more architectural way than just through using the right words or the syntax.

One of the biggest challenges in the approach that I am offering here, trying to find a balance between academic language instruction and disciplinary language instruction, is where does one actually find the balance? I honestly think the New York State standards offer a pathway towards that balance. I am thoroughly impressed with the way the standards broaden the scope of what scientific specific language can be and emphasis academic writing in a way that I think resonates with my broad definition. Crafting lessons with the standards as a starting point should lead to an emphasis on developing those broader language skills. Teachers also need to keep in mind the specific ways in which science writing is different, I have already mentioned the various genres within science, but there is more than just genres. Here is a great resource to help teachers think about the specifics of science language. Including research proven strategies like RAFT writing and Magnet Summaries (included in the paragraphs above) with a commitment to comprehension will help guide a teacher towards the balance between Academic Language and Disciplinary Language.

Parting Thoughts

In speaking with a friend of mine who teaches AP Biology in Austin, Texas, (a summary of the discussion can be found here) he pointed out one thing that I really liked that has not made it into this posting so far. He talked about how his hope for this students was that they would not be intimidated by the language of science. He did not thinking specifically a whole lot about the terms academic language or disciplinary language, but he clearly still sought to infuse his students with a confidence around the language of science. For his context in Austin, many of his students are latino, many of them bilingual or english language learners. The current system of academic language quietly disadvantages those students, and I believe my teacher is right in his assessment of language’s ability to be intimidating or even a barrier to further learning. It leaves those familiar with the language on one side, allowing them a passcard to deeper learning, and others on the outside, afraid of engaging deeply. I have stressed the idea of learning to communicate effectively in regards to academic language, but I think my friend’s suggestion to also build confidence, particularly in light of the ways academic language can unintentionally disenfranchise minority communities, is incredibly important to remember.

Another point I would like to make sure is included in this work is the idea of expert content knowledge versus literacy content knowledge. In a study I came across regarding teaching content specific language, like german for accounting (I once took a course called theological french) and who was best to teach it, an accountant or a german teacher (Kerkeler 2013). What does this have to do with science education? As I have already alluded to above, scientific language can border on being a foreign language, and historically Science teachers have a tendency to build their teacher identity around content knowledge, sometimes at the detriment of their interest or willingness to teach literacy. What the Kerkeler article found is that content knowledge is really important to teaching disciplinary language, but that being able to teach language is important too. What the article finds is that pairing language and literacy instructors together leads to the greatest outcomes. What I think this means to science education is that science teachers need to make sure they are seeking out professional development opportunities in literacy development. Knowing the content is great, but another study (Fang & Wei, 2010) highlighted that when strong literacy education is added to an inquiry based curriculum, students improved in all aspects of understanding.

The last thought I want to close out on is the idea of helping students find their own voice. I have touched on this above, but this point is really important to me. The risk of disadvantaging students who are challenged by recreating specific syntax and tone, either through learning disabilities (like myself) or through a home culture that communicates in significantly different ways, is very real. This is clearly highlighted in the article by Flores listed in the works cited. I truly believe that as teachers we are helping our students build confidence in themselves and their communication when we help them find their own voice. And personally, I think academia will be a much richer place if more people within were willing to write in their own voice and with their own style. If they are able to make their points clearly and succinctly, why does it have to be so rigidly and dispassionately written. I think we need to move past a point, a point my physicist friend highlighted, where using the right language is a way of showing competence and instead the ability to make a point, regardless of the language used, shows competence. There are two short essays below, and I have attempted to craft them in a way that exemplifies an academic approach to writing that still uses one’s personal voice. As my physicist friend also pointed out, moving in this direction might go a long way to breaking down the silos around disciplines that have existed for a long time and lead to more cross fertilization among fields of study.

two more short essays about Academic and Disciplinary language:

Exploring Academic Language I (this includes a more robust conversation around vocabulary)

Exploring Academic Language II (this puts the two interviews I reference in context)

works cited

Bauman, J. & Graves, M. (2010). What is academic vocabulary. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 54(1), 4-12.

Donovan, C. & Coleman, J. (2018). The language of science in the reading and writing of student scientists. Science and Children, Aug 18, 62-66.

Ernst-Slavit, G & Egbert, J. (n.d.) Integrating academic language and content in K-12 classrooms. www.opentext.wsu.edu/planning-meaningful-instruction-for-ells.

Flores, N. (2020). From academic language to language architecture: Challenging raciolinguistic ideologies in research and practice. Theory into Practice, 59(1), 22–31.

Fang, Z (2013). Disciplinary literacy in science: Developing science literacy through trade books. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 57(4), 274-277.

Fang, Z & Wei, Y (2010). Improving middle school students’ science literacy through reading infusion. The Journal of Educational Research,103, 262-273.

Flores, N. (2020). From academic language to language architecture: Challenging raciolinguistic ideologies in research and practice. Theory into Practice, 59(1), 22–31.

Kerkeler, C (2013). Languages for specific academic purposes or languages for general academic purposes? A critical reappraisal of a key issue for language provision in higher education. Language Learning in Higher Education, 3(1), 43-60.

Lewis, W.E. & Strong, J.Z. (2021). Literacy instruction with disciplinary texts: Strategies for grades 6-12. The Guilford Press.

Snow, C. E., & Uccelli, P. (2009). The challenge of academic language. In Olson, D. R., & N. Torrance (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy (pp. 112-133). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Snow, C.E. (2010). Academic language and the challenge of reading and learning about science. Science, 328(5977), 450-452.

Weir, A (2014). The Martian. Broadway Books.