Academic Language in Second Language Learning

Language in academic settings, also referred to academic language, has gained attention in the field of second language learning owing to new understandings of the complexities of language inherent in learning academic content, and new efforts to assess English learners’ language proficiency in the context of school learning. The concept of academic language as distinct from social language has been in the academic literature since the mid-1950s, and surfaced as a major construct in the field of bilingual education in the 1980s. Many readers will be familiar with the ideas of BICS and CALP, first introduced by Jim Cummins in the 1980s. This book presents a critique of academic language as a separable construct from social language, and introduces current research efforts to understand how English learners interact, interpret, and show understanding of language in academic contexts in ways that re-think and go beyond the distinction between social and academic language.

The book is organized into three main sections, each with a range of chapters that consider how academic language plays into how children and youth learn academic content as emergent bilingual students in school settings. A Foreward and Afterward offer commentary on the book and its contents. The intended audience for this book is graduate students, teacher educators, and researchers interested in issues of language and content learning for English learners, the new mainstream of schools across the nation. There is something for a wide range of readers and students of second language acquisition in this volume.

M. Beatriz Arias is an Associate Professor of English Education in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University. She has edited several books and published scholarly articles on Latino students and educational policy, and has focused her research on equity issues for English Learners and Latino students and teachers. She has served as a Court Appointed Monitor for a Federal Court Judge in San Jose California; and in Chicago, Denver and Los Angeles school desegregation cases, she has participated as a Court Appointed expert.