Academic Language across Disciplines

Mahmuda Yasmin Shaila

Assistant Professor of English, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh, Dhaka

Building Academic Language: Meeting COMMON CORE Standards across Disciplines,

Grades 5-12
Jeff Zwiers
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2014 (2nd ed.). 336 pp.
ISBN-13: 978-1118744857, ISBN-10: 11187
Building Academic Language: Meeting COMMON CORE Standards across Disciplines, Grades
5-12 by Jeff Zwiers is a much needed addition in the field of teaching and learning. In this text,
the author reveals the importance of academic language and portrays the ways through which
teachers in the classroom can help students build academic language skills in all disciplines.
Though the text focuses on Common Core State Standards, the discussions on academic
language and the ways to build competency in it are highly relevant for students and teachers
studying and teaching in different settings. This review explores the possibilities of using
the text as a tool to minimize the gap that exists between mainstream and nonmainstream
students who bring with them very little academic language from schools and suffer all
through their academic life.
Zwiers (2014), in the preface to his book, stateshow important it is to become equipped with
academic language, the language that describes “abstract concepts, complex ideas and critical
thinking” (ix). In every phase of academic life, especially when students move from primary to
secondary and higher level, at every step of academic life, success depends on the ability to
use academic language. The Common Core State Standards (2010) expects students to argue,
synthesize, evaluate evidence, analyze complex texts and engage in academic discussions.
Zwiers in the second edition of his book shows that the teachers, though aware of these
expectations, find it very difficult to create classrooms where all these expectations are fulfilled.

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 Academic Language across Disciplines

One reason is that these classes consist of students who do not have any opportunity to
experience and immerse themselves in academic thought or talk outside of the classroom.
These students perform poorly in the classroom and in tests because they are not familiar with
the academic language in different content areas and cannot use them properly to achieve
success. Zwiers, from his rich experience of teaching in different levels from elementary to
tertiary, has announced that students in every level – elementary, middle school, high school,
and even in university courses – struggle with the “language of academic reading, writing
and discussion” (10). However, these students are brilliant and creative. Zwiers portrays how
they are marginalized and left behind because these students do not have social capital – rich
interaction pattern or cultural capital that enriches one through travel, reading, and educated
parents. Most importantly, they are deprived of knowledge and linguistic capital that are
developed from rich conversation with parents and siblings, quality and quantity of language
they are exposed to, and books at home. Mainstream students who are rich in all these can
read, write, and speak according to the expectations of the teachers and the standards. This
allows them to excel in the academic arena.
To explain the scenario, Zwiers brings in Bourdieu (1986). Just as money and property are
unequally distributed in society, so are the less visible words, skills, and knowledge that give
people advantage (Bourdieu, 1986). Those students who do not receive a fair amount of words,
skills, and knowledge suffer all through their academic life. These students work hard and still
fail to produce the desired result only because of their lack of expertise in academic language.
They, unlike their mainstream peers coming from affluent, educated families, cannot read,
write and discuss ideas using academic language and, as a result, suffer academically, socially,
and emotionally.
To overcome the situation, to minimize the gap between mainstream and diverse students,
Zwiers emphasizes on teaching academic language in the classroom. He points out that as
students’ do not pick up academic language as easily as they pick up other types of social
language (Scarcella, 2003), it has to be taught with care in the classroom. Many educators
also highlight the need for teachers to directly teach students how to use academic language
in school settings (Bartolome, 1998; Delpit, 1995; Scarcella, 2003). As the teachers venture to
teach academic language, they need knowledge, skills, and strategies. Most importantly, the
teachers must have respect for these diverse students which Zwiers believes would naturally
develop as soon as the teachers explore the struggling students and invest time and energy to
find out more about their interests, cultures, and beliefs.
Zwiers, in the first few chapters, clarifies the concept of academic and school language. He
uses the metaphor of Rico and Weed (2002), to whom academic language is a tool box, a set of
thinking skills and language abilities to decode and encode complex concepts. The definition
that Zwiers provides helps us to get rid of the common concept that academic language is
just a list of words. Rather “it is the set of words, grammar and discourse strategies used to
describe complex ideas, higher order thinking processes, and abstract concepts” (22). Zwiers
also portrays how academic language is used to describe complexity, higher order thinking,

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and abstraction. To carry out all these functions, the features that academic language uses,
like figurative expressions, dependent clauses, passive voice, and nominalization are also
discussed.
The need for teaching academic language in schools becomes evident throughout the book.
Zwiers, along with creating the awareness to teach students academic language, focuses on
the poor preparation the teachers have in teaching academic language in the classroom. Many
students, as Cummins (1979) reports, enter into the mainstream classes as schools think they
are academically proficient because they are fluent in social and everyday use of English.
However, these students perform poorly not only because they lack academic language
preparation but also that their teachers lack preparation to teach this language. The scenario
has not changed much and it is still very true for many diverse students (Scarcella, 2003).
Keeping that scenario in mind, Zwiers designs chapter three which talks about how to build
academic language in the class. The most important aspect of this chapter is that it shows
how teachers from different disciplines, by incorporating content terms and general academic
terms, can explain content and help students build up academic language. It becomes clear
that it is not only the responsibility of the language teacher to help the diverse students.
Teachers from all disciplines need to intervene. The chapter is a wonderful resource for
teachers as it shows, through examples, how to help students build connections, how to think,
and express using appropriate language. Strategies like co-shaping conversation, rephrasing
student responses, paraphrasing, conducting meta-discussions, and focusing on deeper levels
of talk are all ways to build academic conversation.
Zwiers also discusses how important it is to do scaffolding while teaching academic language.
However, this scaffolding (which also appears in feedback sessions) in teaching academic
language suffers as teachers accept papers and presentations which are not academic in
nature. Applebee (1984) reports that underperforming writers are given more personal, less
academic assignments. Zwiers (2005) observes that less proficient speakers are given far
less thoughtful feedback. While providing feedback to the struggling learners and speakers,
teachers focus much more on mechanics. For proficient speakers, teachers provide positive
comments, probing questions, and elaborate feedback. All these information clearly show the
problem areas in teaching and assessment, and both future and practicing teachers need to
be aware of these pitfalls.
Zwiers has already established the idea that all teachers are language teachers and all have
a role in teaching academic language. Chapter 4 of the book shows how to build academic
language in four school disciplines: science, language, math, and history. The tables that
contain academic expressions for interpreting and argumentation in language arts and
academic expressions for identifying cause and effects in language arts are highly useful for
language teachers. Similar guidance is provided for science, math, and history teachers.
Leaving the content area, Zwiers starts exploring specific skills and in chapter 5, focuses on
classroom discussion. The Common Core standards focus on listening and speaking standards.
Listening is a skill which is rarely taught in the classroom. According to Lundsteen (1979),

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listening is the process through which spoken language is converted to meaning in the mind. It
requires thinking too. The students need to pay attention, organize what they think, and collect
information into levels of importance, and diverse learners struggle here a lot, especially with
interpreting intonation and nonverbal signals. Dictation discussion and note taking comes as
an effective solution. This book repeatedly brings out the point that rich classroom discussion
is vital to build thinking and academic language skills. Many teacher preparation programs
fail to teach the ways to facilitate discussion in the classroom. The teachers who fail to learn
the skill to conduct discussion in the class can take much help from conversation circles, radio
talks, interview grids, prediction cafés, simulations, and structured academic controversy.
Chapter 6 revolves again around the discussion in the classroom. However, Zwiers here tries
to help those diverse students who remain quiet and participate less during this whole class
discussion. To help them, Zwiers immediately shifts to small group discussions as, when
properly supported, these smaller scale discussions can be very effective to build thinking,
academic language, and content understanding in all students (Cohen, 1994). The alarming
part is that even in small groups, students work together to learn facts and do assignments.
Zwiers regrets that it is rare to see activities that require students “to process the experience
with other students, share opinions, disagree with each other, construct a meaning, and
solve complex problems together” (153). To improve the situation, teachers need to train
students how to work in groups, what language to use during the group work and how to
report the findings and solutions. This training of how to interact with others in an academic
way is especially important in grades 5 through 12 when students are expected to engage in
meaningful discussions about a wider range of topics and concepts based on complex texts
across disciplines (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, 2010).
Zwiers in chapter 7 concentrates on reading skills. The author demonstrates here how to
develop both the language of academic reading and the reading of academic language.
Though Common Core State Standards put emphasis on building all students’ abilities to
comprehend grade-level complex texts (Engage NY, 2013), comprehension strategies like
synthesizing, inferring, analyzing, summarizing, and figuring out words are not taught
effectively in the classrooms. Teachers still focus more on learning content. To come out of
this trend, the “Academic Discussion Role” can play an important role. When the students
assume the roles of main idea sculptor, predictor, word detective, inferer, problem finder,
prior knowledge connector, synthesizer, comparer, classifier, questioner, opinion generator,
and summarizer, both the teachers and the students understand clearly that while reading a
text, each person must do all these tasks simultaneously. Zwiers also draws teachers’ attention
to using textbooks as a great resource for teaching academic language. However, here too the
teacher needs to guide students to navigate and notice academic language embedded in it.
Chapter 8 carries a lot of value. Here Zwiers brings in academic writing and it seems quite clear
that many ideas discussed in earlier chapters reappear here to support the building of academic
writing skills. As students move from primary to secondary and higher levels at school, they
need to write expository papers that require arguments, reasoning, clarity, organization, and
technical terms with varied sentence patterns. However, most students draw on oral, informal

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language when they write and it is difficult to move them away from this practice. Zwiers says
that the students need to see models and teachers have to train them how to analyze and
incorporate these models in their writing. Most importantly, students need the opportunity to
read and discuss before they write. The culminating chapters incorporate academic language
in the lesson plan and assessment. The tests appear as a way not only to assess language but
the way to teach language too.
Building Academic Language: Meeting COMMON CORE Standards across Disciplines, Grades
5-12 by Jeff Zwiers is an important addition in the field of language teaching. It is essential
for pre-service as well as for practicing teachers from all disciplines, as the text provides ways
to enhance academic language, a tool students must acquire to achieve academic success.
This book is a road map for those teachers who feel alienated and search for ways to make
changes in the lives of their students who appear in school with very little resources. The
administrators, educators, and the policymakers can consult this text too as it aims to minimize
the achievement gap between the mainstream and nonmainstream students.
Though Zwiers writes in the context of the USA, the struggle to master academic language
exists in schools around the world. There too, especially in EFL classrooms, students discover
that they lack academic capital to compete in the classroom and during tests. This book thus
can have a universal appeal. Another area where this book can contribute much is in the
parenting programs. Parents need to know how the home environment has an effect on their
children. After reading this book, they will think twice before putting all the blame on the poor
children for their academic failure.

References
Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J.G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for
the Sociology of Education (pp. 241-258). Westport: Greenwood Press.
Diaz-Rico, L.T., & Weed, K.Z. (2002). The cross-cultural, language, and academic development handbook:
A complete K-12 reference guide (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Engage NY. (2013). Common Core Toolkit. Retrieved from [Link]
common-core-toolkit.
Lundsteen, S. (1979). Listening: Its impact on reading and the other language arts. Urbana, IL: National
Council of Teachers of English.
Scarcella, R. (2003). Academic language: A conceptual framework. (Technical Report 2003-1). University
of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute.
Zwiers, J. (2005). Developing academic language in middle school English learners: Practices and
perspectives in mainstream classrooms. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of San
Francisco.
Zwiers, J. (2008). Building academic language: Essential practices for content classrooms, grades 5-12.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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