Defining Academic Language and its Key Elements

Vocabulary and syntactic knowledge in oral and written language encompass specific skills that allow students to meet academic demands across the curriculum. Though commonly used to denote breadth of knowledge of word definitions, the term "vocabulary knowledge" also refers to depth of understanding of word parts (prefixes, suffixes, roots, etc.) and awareness of multiple meanings and word relationships that shape the nuances of vocabulary use. Having proficiency in word parts and relationships helps students acquire new vocabulary, reason about the meaning of unfamiliar words, and comprehend the sophisticated vocabulary that characterizes academic language, including:
 

• Morphologically complex words, e.g., unmistakable; wholesomely

• High-frequency, abstract, and multiple-meaning words that are domain-general and often contain Latin morphemes, e.g., principle; approach; lateral

• Complex, domain-specific words that typically contain Greek combining forms, e.g., amnesia; biodegradable; monochromatic

Most broadly, syntactic knowledge refers to the understanding of grammatical forms and rules that govern how words and phrases combine into sentences, and how sentences form paragraphs. To comprehend advanced sentence structures and connected text, students must master basic grammatical rules as well as sophisticated knowledge of words and phrases that are used to establish referents, organize ideas, denote relationships between concepts, and develop text cohesion, including:
 

• Use of connective words requiring sentence-level inferencing, e.g., consequently; whereas; similarly

• Resolution of pronoun reference, e.g., We examined the extent to which native plants in coastal regions adapted to climatic changes in their environment.

• Grammatical agreement between subjects, verbs, and tense, e.g., All of the candidates, as well as the current president, are attending the televised debate.

Given the increasing emphasis on students’ abilities to independently engage with and learn from text, reading comprehension is perhaps the domain most impacted by students’ academic language skills as they progress through school. In fact, researchers have shown that reading comprehension difficulties are in large part due to students’ challenges in understanding the academic language of school texts (Uccelli et al, 2015). Both vocabulary and syntactic knowledge contribute to students’ success or difficulty with reading comprehension, and vocabulary knowledge in particular predicts students' literacy achievement, as it contributes significantly to both word identification and reading comprehension skills. In addition, vocabulary and syntactic knowledge have been shown to account for the majority of individual differences in reading comprehension for students in upper elementary school through high school (Foorman, Koon, Petscher, Mitchell, & Truckenmiller, 2015). Vocabulary knowledge and syntactic knowledge help students engage with text and progress toward deep reading comprehension with increasing independence by supporting their abilities to:
 

• Acquire knowledge and synthesize this with previously learned material

• Analyze audience, structure, purpose, and tone of texts

• Evaluate evidence, main ideas, and details

Understanding the key elements of academic language is the first step to creating a unified mission to help districts and schools improve students’ likelihood of educational success. For all students, mastery of academic language provides the tools needed to comprehend our complex world, in school and beyond.