The term academic language has been used a lot in the field of English as a second language education. What is it? You will probably get a different answer from each educator you ask. How do we support students in acquiring academic language? There are varying answers to this question as well. What we can agree on is that focusing on academic language is crucial for any educator working with multilingual learners, as it equips students with necessary tools that open the doors for future opportunity and access, both inside and outside the classroom.
In the late 1970s, Jim Cummins wrote about the idea that students could have different levels of English language depending on whether they were engaged in social language (basic interpersonal communication skills, or BICS) or academic language (cognitive academic language proficiency, or CALP). Subsequently, teachers began to determine the amount of support that multilingual learners needed to participate in and complete academic tasks at their grade level by their ability to have conversations about less formal social topics like family, sports, and everyday experiences. This line of thinking did multilingual students a great disservice because, many times, students needed more or different support to be successful academically.
Unfortunately, we continue to see these scenarios in schools and classrooms quite frequently. Often, the dedicated English language development support for students who reach an intermediate level of proficiency drops off because they are able to have conversations and function well socially in the classroom environment. It’s understandable that this happens, but we need to continue to be cognizant of the needs that these students have in order for them to succeed linguistically and academically (Benegas and Benjamin, 2025).
The definition of academic language, as well as the work around it, has grown and evolved over time. The field is now taking more of an asset-based approach to language, acknowledging all of the positives that multilingual learners possess and bring to their classrooms and school communities. Importantly, looking at language through a lens of what students can do, instead of what they are unable to do, changes educators’ perspectives of their multilingual learners’ abilities and sets the stage for accelerated language acquisition and academic growth. This is essential for creating an equitable and supportive learning environment.
We can think of language development in terms of three components. The WIDA Consortium has defined these as vocabulary, language control, and linguistic forms and conventions. They work together to build the language that students need in order to access the content at their grade level (WIDA, 2020).
Vocabulary—Building on Background Knowledge
Vocabulary—which refers to the content-related words that students learn in a unit—is what comes to mind for many educators when they think of language development. It is also what most educators feel the most confident in working on with their students. Isabel Beck and her collaborators refer to Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 vocabulary words. Since Tier 1 words are common words that are very concrete to understand, we should concentrate on Tier 2 and Tier 3 words. Tier 2 words are used across content areas, perhaps with multiple meanings, and Tier 3 words are specific to one content area. There are many different strategies for teaching vocabulary words, including the Frayer model, the cognitive content dictionary, and the picture word inductive model (Beck et al., 2013). These strategies, along with other effective vocabulary development strategies, appear in Schoolwide’s Grammar Fundamentals units (https://schoolwide.com/blog/grammar-fundamentals-2024-2025-sample) as part of the embedded supports and scaffolds and appendices for multilingual learners.
Recently, I was teaching an interdisciplinary unit on animal adaptations with multilingual learners. There were unknown vocabulary words that the students needed to know to be able to understand the content. At the beginning of each week, I previewed the vocabulary words that we would focus on. These included adaptation, camouflage, predator, and prey. Exposing the students to this vocabulary before engaging in reading and writing activities helped to build their background knowledge. Students knew that adaptations such as camouflage helped animals hunt their prey or avoid predators. They were able to use the words orally and in writing with increased proficiency throughout the unit and were successful in completing an informative writing piece about the topic.
Language Control—Explicit AND Engaging Instruction
The second component, language control, is a more complex component to address. It includes the language structures and sentence patterns students are able to incorporate into their speech and writing, as well as to process and understand when listening or reading. Examples of these would be all of the rules of grammar that many of us love to hate, including verb tenses, different types of adjectives, conjunctions, and other parts of speech. These need to be explicitly taught, as they don’t come naturally to many students, even those who are native speakers of English. One engaging way to teach language control is through the use of the sentence patterning chart. Students have fun coming up with words of different parts of speech related to the content and making creative sentences (WIDA, 2020).
Related to my prior anecdote, in the instruction around animal adaptations, I also focused on language control. I used examples of phrases and complete sentences and had students identify them. This served as a model for them in speaking or writing complete sentences when answering questions or engaging in discussions.
Linguistic Forms and Conventions—Scaffolding and Support
The final component of academic language is linguistic forms and conventions. This refers to the amount of language that students are able to use, produce, process, and understand. Our goal with this aspect is to continuously give students the tools they need to speak, write, read, and understand increasingly complex sentences. This does not happen with the wave of a magic wand, as much as we want it to. It takes a lot of work in terms of scaffolds and supports, as well as a lot of patience. When we take the time, it really pays off in students’ linguistic growth as well as academics (WIDA, 2020).
As we studied animal adaptations, I focused a great deal on using conjunctions to help students explain their reasoning; specifically, we talked about how conjunctions can be used to give more detail. Students were taught words like so and because to demonstrate their knowledge of animal adaptations. They wrote that animals had camouflage “so that they can hide from predators” or that birds have feathers “because they help them stay warm.” Knowing how sentences are put together using different parts of speech supports students’ acquisition of English.
Our work as educators of not only multilingual learners but all learners is to scaffold and support all three of these aspects of language development. Since each of these is equally important, we must address them all in instruction on a consistent basis. Doing so will lead to linguistic and academic growth for all students, regardless of background.
References
Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., and Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction. Guilford Press Book/Childcraft International.
Benegas, M., and Benjamin, N. (2025). Language of Identity, Language of Access: Liberatory Learning for Multilingual Classrooms. Corwin, a Sage Company.
WIDA. (2020). WIDA English Language Development Standards Framework, 2020 Edition: Kindergarten–Grade 12. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.
Sara Huse has been an educator in Madison, Wisconsin, for over two decades. She has a strong passion for and experience in bringing practical strategies to educators working with multilingual learners, which is a hallmark of the professional development she provides. Sara began her career as a third-grade bilingual teacher and has taught extensively at the elementary and middle school levels. In addition to serving as a bilingual resource teacher and instructional coach with the Madison Metropolitan School District, she teaches in the ESL/Bilingual Education program at Edgewood College and is a literacy consultant for Schoolwide, Inc.
