Did you know that research has shown for a new word to become part of our active vocabulary – the language we use every day – we need to read or hear the word at least 17 times? That’s a lot of repetition!
For children learning subjects in a second language, it can be difficult to get this kind of experience with subject specific or academic language. So how do we help them to develop their vocabulary?
Essentially, for international or bilingual schools, every classroom is a language classroom and every teacher is a language teacher. This is quite a scary thought if you, the teacher, aren’t fluent in the second language.
First things first
As a subject teacher, we know it can be hard to think about developing language when you need to complete the course content. However, if students don’t understand the language in their textbooks, or the subject-specific vocabulary you use in class, they will inevitably struggle with the subject too.
Helping students with their language needn’t be tricky or time-consuming for you. In fact, you can break it down into three steps.
1. Recognise language ability of students
2. Recognise language demand – e.g. what students need to understand in the textbooks
3. Fill the gap between language ability and language demand
Recognising language ability
When we talk about language in school, we’re talking about two different types of language: social and academic. These are sometimes referred to as basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS) and cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP).
Social language or BICS
e.g.
“Look at this video on YouTube.”
“How about going to the shops later?”
“I didn’t do my homework last night!”
Academic language or CALP
e.g.
“The probability of that happening is lower”
“Which key is this piece of music written in?”
“The next step is to add sulphur.”
You might find that some students can chat away with their friends about tv shows and hobbies but find it difficult to use academic language in the classroom. Fluency in one, does not mean fluency in the other. We’ll look at common problem areas with both types of language in the next section.
For an instant view of your students’ language ability, you could use a baseline assessment, such as Cambridge CEM. Baseline assessments show you the language level of your students – both the strengths and the weaknesses. You can then use this data to help plan your lessons.
Recognising language demand
What are the language demands of your subject? Maybe you teach a subject that has a lot of specific vocabulary? Or perhaps you use resources that don’t have language support?
There are three common areas where students struggle with language:
- Grammar and vocabulary
- Complexity and length
- Skills (reading, writing, speaking, listening)
Grammar and vocabulary
Let’s have a look at a grammar and vocabulary example. Which sentence is more difficult for learners to understand?
1. It has been debated, however, whether these changes fuelled further revolution.
2. However, historians disagree about whether these changes caused another revolution.
What do you think?
‘It has been debated’ is an example of passive language. Passive language is generally more difficult to understand because it is unclear who is doing the action – who is doing the debating in sentence 1? At a basic level, passive voice also uses more words. The second sentence makes it clear, with active voice, that it is historians who disagree.
‘However’ is a contrast word and in the first sentence, it’s hidden away in the middle. If you move it to the front of a sentence, the learner knows straight away that contrasting information is to follow.
‘Fuelled’ is an example of metaphorical language and metaphorical language is more difficult to understand. The word ‘caused’ is much easier to understand in this context.
Finally, ‘further revolution’ is quite abstract, whereas ‘another revolution’ is more concrete with its meaning.
With all this in mind, the second sentence is easier to understand.
If you are unsure of the words that your learners might find difficult, there is a useful and free tool you can use. The English Profile helps teachers understand what the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) means for English. It describes what aspects of English are typically learned at each CEFR level.
Complexity and length
For a general rule, shorter is better.
Smaller words are normally easier to understand. For example, use ‘but’ instead of ‘whereas’ where possible. ‘But’ is a commonly used BICS word, and ‘whereas’ is more CALP.
The same applies to sentences – the shorter the better. Use fewer conjunctions and more sentences. This doesn’t make the writing very exciting, but it does make it easier to understand and so is very useful when giving instructions to students.
Also think about keeping paragraphs short, using bullet points and numbering. This helps to make paragraphs look less daunting on the page or screen.
Skills
If you are teaching a subject in a different language, it’s important to think about what you ask of your students. For example, when giving instructions, should you read them out or write them down?
It is a good idea to tell your learners as well as writing instructions down. In this way, learners can practise their listening skills safe in the knowledge that they can refer to the written instructions if they miss anything.
Similarly, be aware that when you ask learners to write, they must think about spelling and when you ask them to speak, they must think about pronunciation. As we know, English spelling and pronunciation can often be misleading!
So what can we do to support students with these skills?
Sometimes it can be as simple as giving extra time for thinking. For example, this could include time for making notes before asking learners to talk about something, so they can actively practise words with difficult pronunciation maybe.
Think – pair – share activities are also useful for planning. By working with a friend, learners can test out ideas and practise in a relaxed way. This is great for increasing the number of interactions students have with new language and getting them up to that magic number 17 when they are using new vocabulary!
You could also give demonstrations and model texts so that students can see good examples before producing their own work.
Finally, you can give your learners speaking or writing frames to get them started. You can tailor these to have different levels of support.
This example has minimal support and would be best for confident students:
Whereas this example has more support:
Filling the gap
Once you have recognised the language ability of your learners and the language demand of the course and resources, your job is to fill that gap. We know that this isn’t always simple!
How can you use language in your planning? For each lesson, you could make a note of the different types of language that learners will need to understand.
Content vocabulary
- What content vocabulary do students need for the lesson? These are subject specific words.
Functional language
- What functional language is needed for these skills? (sequencing language – then, before, next, etc.)
Language skills
- What language skills are needed in the lesson: reading, writing, listening, speaking?
If you’re a primary or lower secondary teacher who is teaching in a second language, then we hope you have found this article useful. But remember, our Primary and Lower secondary resources (including, maths and science resources, as well as English) contain all of this language support inside.
For example, language functions at the top of the page, specific vocabulary in use and specific vocabulary in clear boxes throughout. These all help to support your planning because we have done the language work for you!
