Teaching Academic Vocabulary to English Language Learners (ELLs)

Confronted with dual learning tasks—learning English as a 2nd language and grade-level content, English Language Learners (ELLs) in K-12 are often found struggling to become fluent in English and falling behind in academic studies. It is commonly recognized that academic vocabulary is strongly related to academic achievement. Academic vocabulary is of critical importance in content learning and key to classroom interactions as students are engaged in learning activities using academic language. This article will zero in on the challenges students encounter in learning academic vocabulary. It will start with the importance of teaching ELLs academic vocabulary, followed by a classification of academic vocabulary, and an elaboration of the characteristics of academic language. Teacher candidates will explore why sheltered instruction is indispensable for the learning of vocabulary and how the two main sources of word learning—incidental learning and explicit instruction, facilitates vocabulary development. The focus will be placed on the specific strategies to help students develop a rich academic vocabulary inventory. It is hoped that teacher candidates will walk away with some guiding principles on teaching academic vocabulary and find these principles helpful in their classrooms with ELLs.

Receptive academic vocabulary knowledge and extramural English involvement – is there a correlation?

Extramural English (EE) exposure has been shown to correlate with general vocabulary knowledge. It remains uncertain, however, how academic vocabulary knowledge correlates with EE and can be explained by EE factors and demographic factors. Therefore, an academic vocabulary test, a background questionnaire, and a survey on current EE involvement were administered to 817 Swedish upper-secondary students in university-preparatory study programmes. A linear model revealed little explanation from demographic factors (age, gender, number of first languages, length of English instruction, and parental educational level) whereas EE factors (reading, listening & viewing without textual support, viewing with Swedish subtitles) accounted for 26% of the variation. Since extensive EE involvement may support the incidental learning of academic lexis, the paper suggests pre-tertiary instructional principles being guided by extramural as well as intramural incidental learning opportunities.

Analysis of Code Switching Used in Student-Lecturer Interactions in Online Learning Using Whatsapp

This study focuses on how code switchings (CS) are used in the student-lecturer interaction in WhatsApp-based online learning. It specifically aims at investigating the types, the functions, and the most dominant types of CS used in the so-called interaction. 233 code-switched utterances from the students’ and the lecturer’s chats were collected as the primary source data. The chats took place during the online learning of the Academic Vocabulary and Corpus course from March to November 2020. For data analysis, the types of CS proposed by Poplack and the functions of CS by Eldridge and Flyman-Mattsson/Burenhut were endorsed. The results show that the analyzed data contain 3 types of code-switching that included tag switching (21 uses, 9%), intra-sentential switching (197 uses, 85%), and inter-sentential switching (15 uses, 6%). Intra-sentential switching is the most dominant type found in the conversation. During the interaction, the lecturer applied 3 functions of CS that included topic switch (46%), affective function (23%), and repetitive function (31%). Meanwhile, the students applied 4 functions of CS that included equivalence (28%), floor-holding (2%), reiteration (52%), and conflict-control (18%).

Writing in academic Slovene: state and origins of students’ knowledge and skills

By using a survey and semi-structured interviewing our study showed that the majority of Slovene PhD students are satisfied with their Slovene academic writing skills, but admitted they could improve, for example, with regard to their use of typical academic vocabulary in its usual context; writing concisely and accurately; and producing characteristic sentences and phrases in accordance with specific sections of text. As for the origins of the skills in question, in students’ opinion the most important way of learning how to write academic Slovene is by reading academic text during the entire course of study, as well as by writing term papers and similar assignments. Here – in PhD students’ and supervisors’ opinion – the role of teachers is very important, i.e. all teachers, not just linguists, should contribute to the excellence of students’ knowledge of academic Slovene.