Academic Language Mastery ─ Grammar and Syntax in Context

Academic Language is the school language code that provides students with access to the curriculum. Growing numbers of students, including English Learners, speakers of non-standard English, and children from low-income families have difficulty mastering the kinds of academic language needed to succeed in school, especially if they have never been explicitly taught how to use it. Similarly, many of our nation's teachers have never been taught how to facilitate Academic Language development while simultaneously teaching academic content. Students who are unable to crack the Academic Language code are more apt to be become disengaged and, ultimately, drop out of school. 

The Academic Language demands of the Common Core and other, rigorous new standards are higher than ever. As states across the country struggle to implement these standards, they also have to determine how to meet the needs of ELLs and other Academic Language learners within a more rigorously and cognitively demanding set of expectations for all students.

This proposed title is part of a four-book series on promoting Academic Language development for both English Learners and Standard English learners. Each of the first three volumes covers one of the essential components of Academic Language Development -- discourse, academic vocabulary, and complex syntactical and grammatical structures. A fourth volume addresses Culturally Responsive Instruction -- a key factor in promoting Academic Language acquisition. The series as a whole is designed to equip all teachers with the linguistic knowledge and skill to help students use the language associated with the academic discourse of school subjects and develop an awareness of how language modalities (speaking, listening, reading, and writing) function across different academic contexts.