There is a growing awareness of the importance of academic vocabulary, and more generally, of academic language proficiency, for students’ success in school. There is also a growing body of research on the nature of the demands that academic language places on readers and writers, and on interventions to help students meet these demands. In this review, we discuss the role of academic vocabulary within academic language, examine recent research on instruction in academic vocabulary, considering both general academic words and discipline‐specific words, and offer our perspective on the current state of this research and recommendations on how to continue inquiry and to improve practice in this area. We use the metaphor of ‘words as tools’ to reflect our understanding that instruction in academic vocabulary must approach words as means for communicating and thinking about disciplinary content, and must therefore provide students with opportunities to use the instructed words for these purposes as they are learning them.

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The goal of this experimental intervention study was to determine if evidence-based instructional strategies for general vocabulary words are effective with middle school English learner (EL) students and academic vocabulary words. Participants showed significantly more growth in their knowledge of academic vocabulary during the treatment condition than during the control condition. A secondary goal of this study was to examine the predictive utility of students' English language proficiency, and students' general vocabulary knowledge in English was a positive predictor for their academic vocabulary growth during the intervention. However, participants' growth during the control period had the greatest predictive utility for their growth during the intervention. Furthermore, this relationship was negative, suggesting that the intervention had the greatest benefits for students who made the least progress in English vocabulary in the absence of the intervention. Implications for instruction, policy, and future research are presented.

Reading engagement has been found to be a predictor of reading comprehension and reading achievement in English monolingual students across the elementary grades. However, researchers have not yet explored this relationship with English language learners (ELLs). The purpose of this study was to understand the role of ELLs' reading engagement in both their general and content-specific reading comprehension. We used the construct of reading engagement to determine whether engagement mediated the relationship between ELLs' English language proficiency and general reading comprehension and the relationship between content-specific (science) academic vocabulary and content area (science) reading comprehension. For both 5th-grade Asian ELLs and 6th-grade Hispanic ELLs, reading engagement mediated the relationship between English language proficiency and general comprehension and the relationship between science vocabulary and science comprehension. Taken together, these findings suggest that reading engagement functions as an explanatory mechanism between language proficiency and comprehension in early adolescent ELLs. We discuss the implications of these findings for reading engagement in late elementary and middle school.

In the DCAAL project, a group of master teachers and university researchers found that there are many opportunities within content area lessons for supporting students' academic language development.

Adolescent English‐language learners (ELLs) encounter increasingly difficult academic language as they progress through school. This article describes the design of an after‐school intervention, Language Workshop, created to help middle school ELLs build their knowledge of academic vocabulary words. Evidence‐based principles of vocabulary instruction for ELLs are explained, such as the importance of multiple exposures to words in multiple contexts, opportunities to practice and personalize word meanings, and visual support for words. Accompanying activities and games are also described. Because the intervention took place in a voluntary after‐school program, engagement was a priority. Therefore, the games and activities are highly interactive and collaborative while also linked to empirical vocabulary research. The article provides a description of the Language Workshop study, demonstrating the effectiveness of the program. يواجه دارسو اللغة الإنكليزية المراهقون لغة أكاديمية متزايدة في الصعوبة مع تقدمهم في الدراسة. إذ تصف هذه المقالة تصميم برنامج التدخل بعد المدرسة يسمى ورشة اللغة تم خلقها كي تساعد دارسي اللغة الأنكليزية في المدرسة الإعدادية في بناء معرفتهم بمفردات أكاديمية. وقد تم شرح مبادئ تعليم المفردات المبنية على الشواهد مثل أهمية تعددية التعرض للكلمات في سياقات متعددة وفرص الممارسة ويضفي طابعاً شخصياً لمعاني الكلمة والدعم البصري للكلمة وكذلك يتم وصف أنشطة وألعاب مصاحبة. ولكون حلول التدخل في برنامج متطوع بعد المدرسة احتل التشغيل المرتبة الأولى من الأولويات. لذا الألعاب والأنشطة متفاعلة ومتعاونة في الوقت أنها مرتبطة بأبحاث مفردات مبنية على مراقبات وتجارب. وتوفر المقالة وصف دراسة ورشة اللغة تظهر فعالية البرنامج. 青少年英语学习者在接受学校教育期间会遇到越来越艰深的学术语言。本文描述一项称为「语言工作坊」的课后干预教学，其设计旨在帮助英语学习者培养他们的学术词汇知识。作者解释为英语学习者而设的词汇教学的循证原则，例如：多方面接触单字在多重语境中的使用的重要性、有机会练习使用单字及把单字意义个人化的重要性，以及为单字学习提供视觉支援的重要性。本文亦描述一些伴随着这语言工作坊的活动与游戏。因为这项干预教学是自愿参加的课后学习计划，学生的投入是一项优先的考虑。因此，游戏与活动是以高度互动式和协作式进行，同时亦连结到词汇研究的实验依据。本文提供一个「语言工作坊」研究的报告，并说明这项研究计划的成效。 Les adolescents qui apprennent l'anglais comme langue seconde (ELL) éprouvent des difficultés croissantes en langage académique au fur et à mesure qu'ils passent d'une classe à l'autre. Cet article présente le plan d'une intervention après la classe, un Atelier de langue, créé pour aider les ELL du second degré à développer leur connaissance du vocabulaire académique. On explique les principes de l'enseignement du vocabulaire basé sur la recherche, comme l'importance des expositions multiples aux mots dans des contextes différents, les occasions de pratiquer et de personnaliser la signification des mots, et l'intérêt que les mots disposent d'un support visuel. On décrit également des activités et des jeux d'accompagnement. L'investissement personnel était une nécessité première, l'intervention ayant lieu après la classe, sur la base du volontariat. De ce fait, les jeux et les activités étaient hautement interactifs tout en étant liés à une recherche de vocabulaire empirique. Cet article fournit une description de la recherche Atelier de langue, et met en valeur l'efficacité de ce programme. Подростки, для которых...

Fisher and Frey have developed, implemented, and refined a process for teachers and students that results in evidence becoming a signature part of student work.You'll see how scaffolding these skills, which often are not learned until college or the workplace, can improve your students' reading and writing, both in terms of the habits they develop and in the writing they produce. QR codes within the book link to videos of classroom strategies in action, teacher ideas, and chapter introductions from the authors! ORDER NOW! reading.org/closereading Enter this code for priority processing: CRAW 800.336.7323 (U.S. and Canada) | 302.731.1600 (all other countries) Members SAVE 20%

This article explores the changing beliefs and practices of 25 secondary teachers participating in a yearlong professional learning (PL) partnership. To demonstrate differences in teachers' approaches to and understandings resulting from that PL, the authors looked more closely at three teachers and found that their ideas about academic language instruction and their related pedagogy progressed in ways that were consistent with the stated PL objectives. However, the teachers varied in the way they situated the learning within their practice. The cases presented highlight the aspects of PL that resonated most with the teachers participating in the yearlong initiative.