Difference Between Academic Writing And Other Uses of English Text

Jonathan Friesen - Writing Coach

Social english is the language of everyday communication in oral and written forms. Examples include: when your students are talking to their friends on the playground or in the school bus when you and your students are having an informal face to face conversation when your students go to the grocery store and read the shopping list ells' social english may start developing within a few months. However, it will likely take a couple of years before ells fully develop social english skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. An ell student with social english proficiency may not necessarily have the academic english proficiency.

It is related to a standards based curriculum, including the content areas of math, science, social studies, and english language arts. To facilitate academic language development at the kindergarten level, you can focus on oral language development around themes like plants, mexico, and dinosaurs. In first grade, you can add reading and writing with a focus on thematic units and literacy development through phonics and storybooks. In the second and third grades, you can focus on higher order literacy skills around the thematic curriculum, as well as using novels, anthologies, trade books, and basal readers. For example: in math you can teach your students all the terms for subtraction, like subtract, take away, and decreased by.

In science, you can teach the terms to connect the parts of an experiment, like therefore, as a result, and for instance. For social studies, you can teach the words and also the background knowledge that ells will need. For example, when you mention thanksgiving, an english speaking student may think of the first european settlers on the east coast during the 17th and 18th centuries. In english language arts, you can teach ells by using basic graphic organizers for word development to visually represent knowledge. Ells come to school not only to learn how to communicate socially, but to become academically proficient in english. Just because they can speak on the playground, talk to peers, and use everyday english does not mean that they are up to speed in academic english.

To the contrary, these ells are not yet proficient enough to handle the standards based curriculum. They lack the academic vocabulary needed to develop the content knowledge in english that they will need to succeed in future schooling. By recognizing these two types of proficiencies, you can help expedite your ells' academic english. Although there are no official lists of academic english words available, we have suggestions on how to select appropriate vocabulary words to teach ells. However, it is important to note that students will learn at different rates, depending on a variety of variables, including students' existing english proficiency, primary language literacy level, and the quality of the instruction they receive. Since the ells in your classroom probably have different levels of language proficiency, your challenges will be unique with each student. An important first step is identifying your students' levels of english language development.

The following descriptions of the stages of english language development may help you recognize your ells' level of english proficiency. Ells at the beginning stage demonstrate comprehension of simplified language, speak a few english words, answer simple questions, and use common social greetings and repetitive phrases. Ells at the intermediate stage speak using standard grammar and pronunciation, but some rules are still missing. Their level of comprehension is high and they can ask or answer instructional questions.

They can actively participate in conversations, retell stories, and use expanded vocabulary and paraphrasing. Ells at the advanced stage use consistent standard english vocabulary, grammar, idioms, and oral/written strategies similar to those of english speaking peers. They use idiomatic expressions and appropriate ways of speaking according to their audience. Once you have determined your students' levels of proficiency, you can help them develop social and academic english without watering down the curriculum. Here are some ways you can involve ells through meaningful social language that stimulates their academic english growth. As much as possible, use the ells' background knowledge of what they know and bring to school. Include many contextual supports through visuals, maps, charts, manipulatives, music, and pantomiming.

You can also use total physical response tpr activities to help ells learn by doing. As ells reach the intermediate level, use social english with contextual support to teach academic english. Cooperative group projects with more advanced ells or english speakers are also helpful for intermediate ells. Ells at different stages of english proficiency can be challenged to think at higher levels, even if their vocabulary and expressive skills are fairly limited. For example, early intermediate students might be learning about urban and rural life in the united states. Discover strategies on teaching content areas to ells and for improving their academic english.

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You may think that since english is so widely used all over the world, that if you create your website in english, it can be easily understood all over the world by those conversant in the language. While it is true that the english spoken in one country is mostly the same as that spoken in another, there are some variations that you may want to be aware of, so that you can reduce misunderstanding when your site is read by english users in another country. Note that this article is not designed to be an academic treatise on the subject. It is a practical article, written from the point of view of a webmaster, and meant for other webmasters writing in english. We have really everything in common with america nowadays except, of course, language.

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Here are the main things i find that i need to look out for, language wise, when writing my content. Note that although i refer only to the differences between us and uk english, there are undoubtedly differences with the other english variants as well. Probably the most obvious difference between the various forms of english used in the world is the spelling of a large number of english words. I have written about this previously, from the point of view of search engine visibility, in my article your website's spelling and the search engines . For example, numerous commonly used words are spelt differently in the us compared to the uk and most of the world.

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I recently had a visitor inform me that many words on my site were misspelt with an ise ending the uk/international spelling when it should have had what was to him the correct spelling, an ize suffix the us spelling. The list of spelling differences between us and uk english is surprisingly long, and includes my very use of learnt and misspelt above us english usually uses learned and misspelled . Although this difference is very glaring, it is also the least problematic where the comprehension of your content is concerned. Since i've already discussed those implications at length in my above mentioned article. Perhaps more problematic is that the different english variants have different words for the same concept. This extends even to the very basic things in the language like punctuation marks. If you want your content to be understood correctly no matter which country your reader comes from, it may sometimes be necessary to add explanatory notes or qualify such words that do not occur in the other variant of english.