Help your students master academic language with these strategies

Academic language is the proficiency in verbal, written, auditory, and visual language necessary for the best learning outcomes in school and other academic spheres. Simply put, it is the vocabulary used for classroom lessons, books, tests, and assignments. Students are required to pick up this language and be fluent in it. Academic language, which is very different from “conversational” or “social” language, encompasses a variety of formal-language skills: Vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, syntax, discipline-specific terminology, or rhetorical conventions. These aspects allow students to acquire knowledge and academic skills and help them navigate successfully through policies, assignments, expectations, and cultural norms. A student may struggle in a school setting even if he is highly intelligent and capable if he hasn't been able to master certain terms and concepts relevant for the academic sphere. Here is how teachers can help students master academic language.  

Teach diverse texts in the context of other reading activities  
Introduce a variety of genres of texts and give students the opportunity to read and learn. Help them discover new words and terms on their own while giving them a space for discussion and collaboration with their peers. 

Introduce academic vocabulary in a dynamic way 
Multiple encounters with a word in various authentic contexts can help students review and fully internalize the meaning and usage in different contexts. Another trick to make their introduction memorable is to make it an engaging encounter. Use the word in a funny or personal story. 

Boost wordpower 
Understanding semantics, word categorizations and associations will help children learn academic jargon and difficult terms in a structured way.  It will help them develop an in-depth linguistic knowledge. 

Help students translate from academic to social language and vice-versa 
The best way to get students used to academic language is to help them understand how it compares with social language. Encourage them to translate their conversational language into academic terms when they interact in class. Similarly, when they are exposed to academic texts, help them translate it into social language to understand the base concepts and the details that build from there. 

Engage students in developing narrative language 
Narrative language is the ability to understand or create a fictional or real interpretation of an experience. Teachers should teach students about complex grammatical structures and elements of narrative language, such as compound sentences, subordinate clauses, adverbial clauses, prepositional phrases, connectives, noun phrases, verb phrases, and pronoun references.