Developing Academic Languagethrough

Instructional Conversations

Robin C. Scarcella, UC Irvinercscarce@uci.edu

Robin ScarcellaProgram in Academic English and ESL

University of California - Irvine rcscarce@uci.edu

• Structured conversations• How not to engage students in conversations• Critical features• Lesson cycles• Sentence stems

Agenda

What are Structured Conversations?• Structured conversations always entail

extended dialogue between teachers and students and between classmates about topics and tasks that are relevant to students and have educational value

• They always develop students’ language and complex thinking skills.

• Discussion-based lessons carried out with the assistance of others who help students arrive at a deeper understanding of the academic content. Structured conversations provide opportunities for students to use language in ways that promote analysis, reflection, and critical thinking.

Structured Structured ConversationsConversations

What do structured conversations do?

• Allow students to work together as a class, in small groups, or even in pairs to maximize their own language learning as well as that of others.

These classroom interactions create opportunitiesfor students’ conceptual and linguistic developmentby making connections between academic content,students’ prior knowledge and cultural experiences.

The interactions have to be VERY carefully structured to teach language.Language development will necessarilyemerge through unstructured conversations.

Let’s start with how not to engage students in conversations.

• Begin by ignoring language objectives. Don’t provide a comprehensive, coordinated plan for using instructional conversations to help students reach specific language objectives, improve specific skills, and/or gain specific types of knowledge.

A Big Concern: Language Objectives

• Make sure learners have daily prolonged unstructured conversations and no instruction. Never teach students the language skills and features that they need to participate in conversations.

How not to engage students in conversations:

Grouping Practices

Unstructured Cooperative Learning with NO Reading Material

Carefully Structured Cooperative Learning Tasks with Reading Material

Free Conversation Carefully Structured Conversational Tasks

Ineffective Effective

• Don’t provide direct, explicit instruction of language embedded in content that students can use in their conversations.

• Don’t provide feedback.• Don’t worry about struggling learners. • Don’t provide students with any special

scaffolding.

How not to engage students in conversations:

Scaffolding

• Scaffolding is a means by which students receive support in various forms from their teachers in an effort to promote the development of specific language skills and features as well as understanding.

• Scaffolding eventually results in independence through the careful reduction of support as students make progress.

Critical Features

Critical Feature 1Teachers

and Students-- Interacting

Together to Achieve

Learning

Joint Production

• Experts and novices work together on a common goal.

This increases the amount of exposureto language that learners receive. It also increasestheir opportunities to use language.

Critical Feature 2Teachers--

Scaffolding the Students’

Language Development

Critical Feature 3 Teachers-Connecting

Language Use to Students’ Lives and Experiences-When

Appropriate.

Higher-Level Thinking

• Teachers challenging students to think critically and develop complex thought (application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation)

Critical Feature 5

Teachers and Students --

Participating in Extended

Conversation

Critical Feature 6

• Students -- Having Many Opportunities to

Respond

Critical Feature 7

• Teachers-- Providing Feedback on Language

Use

Structured Conversations

To participate in conversation, students need to know

a lot of language.

• Mere exposure to language in the course of conversation does not guarantee the student’s acquisition of language.

Structured conversations in teaching learnersgenerally entail a series of activities or a lesson cycle or sequence leading up to a final extendedconversation.

Lesson Cycle or Sequence

Step 1: Building Interest

• Teachers introduce the conversational task and build interest in it.

Teachers identify and teach 3-4 features of the language that the students need to use in conversation but do not know or have difficulty using.

Step 2: Teaching Language

Vocabulary

• Everyday words used in comparisons that express relationships in time, space, quantity, direction, order, size, and age

most, many, less, longer, and least.

• Everyday words that express comparisons and link sentences and that express logical relationships such as: same, alike, different from, opposite of, almost, exactly, not quite.

•

Source: Wong-Fillmore. L. 2004. http://www.scoe.org/aiming_high/docs/AH_language.pdf

Fixed Expressions

• Equivalent to

• Different from

• Similar to

Grammar

Comparative Constructions

Shrek is more interesting than Romeo and Juliet.

Three Syllable or More Adjectives

Put 'more’/’most’ in front:

expensive ----- more expensive

expensive ---- most expensive

One Syllable Adjectives

Add 'er’ / ‘est’

short -----shorter

shorter-----shortest

• Give students multiple opportunities to hear you use language.

Step 3: Model and Practice

Perfect Practice in Conversation

Each time a teacher gets a student to practice

a language feature correctly, it helps the student learn the feature!

That’s right! Joe Torgesen calls each practice exchange a

Positive instructional interaction.

Adapted from David Howe 2006

______ and ______are similar.

Each (is / has) ___________.

Like __________, _____________ also has _________.

A significant similarity between the two is ____________.

Step 3: Practice -- Sentence Strips

Teachers can give students sentence strips to use when modeling and practicing comparison constructions.

Source: Marsha Zandi, UCSDTeacher Professional Development

Sentence Strips

• Although they share many similarities, ____________ differs from ____________ because ________________.

• Unlike _______, _______ (is/has) _________________.

• One important difference between the two is __________.

• Perhaps, the most significant difference is _______________ because __________________.

Source: Marsha Zandi, UCSDTeacher Professional Development

Step 3: Practice -- Graphic Organizers

• Teachers tell students to complete charts with partners, e.g., a Venn Diagram Chart comparing two movies or TV shows.

Step 3: More Practice -- Highly Scaffolded Instructional Conversation

First:- Partner A begins by asking questions. - Partner B answers the questions.

SecondPartner B asks the questions and Partner A answers the questions.

Step 4: Feedback

Feedback

• The teacher explicitly explains and models language features while students are engaged

• The teacher guides students while they practice the features and, if needed, provides instructional feedback

• The teacher provides opportunities for students to use the features themselves and reinforces student correct responses

Step 5: The Instructional Conversation

• The teacher asks students to use language features in an extended conversation, e.g., to compare two movies or TV shows and recommend one to their classmates.

• As the students discuss the movies with classmates, the teacher scaffolds language use and asks probing questions.

Your Turn: Use sentence stems to compare two books or two short stories.

Your Turn

• Come up with 4 behaviors (or actions) that teachers could use to engage students in structured conversations that improve their students’ language.

Example: The teacher groups students,carefully assigning speaking roles toeach student to ensure all students talk.

Let’s look at the activities that Roland Tharp and Ronald Gallimore (1989) discuss.

Did you identify any of

these actions or behaviors?

Teacher Actions/Behaviors

1. The teacher creates a challenging but non-threatening atmosphere. The teacher creates an atmosphere that challenges students and allows them to understand and discuss the meaning of the text.

2. The teacher responds to student contributions. While having an initial plan and maintaining the focus and coherence of discussions about reading passages, the teacher is also responsive to students' statements.

 

3. The teacher promotes discussion. Much of the discussion centers on questions and answers for which there might be more than one correct answer.

4. The teacher encourages students to build on others’ comments. The discussion is characterized by multiple, interactive, connected utterances; succeeding utterances build upon and extend previous ones.

Teacher Actions/Behaviors

5. The teacher encourages general participation among students. The teacher does not hold exclusive right to determine who talks, and students are encouraged to volunteer or otherwise influence the selection of speaking turns.

Teacher Actions/Behaviors

6. The teacher selects a theme or idea to serve as a stating point to focus the discussion. The teacher has a general plan for how the theme will unfold and "chunks" the text (divides it into parts) to permit optimal exploration of the theme.

Teacher Actions/Behaviors

Lots of preparation is required!

7. The teacher either "hooks into" or provides students with pertinent background knowledge and relevant information necessary for understanding the text. Background knowledge and information are then woven into the discussion that follows.

Teacher Actions/Behaviors

8. The teacher provides direct teaching of language features, skills or concepts and scaffolds their use in conversation.

The teacher prepares students to participate in the conversation.

Teacher Actions/Behaviors

9. Whenever appropriate, the teacher promotes the use of more complex language and expression. The teacher elicits more extended student contributions by using a variety of elicitation techniques: a. invitations to expand (Tell me more about_____, What do you mean by____?), b. restatements (In other words,______), and c. pauses, giving students time to respond.

Teacher Actions/Behaviors

10. The teacher promotes students' use of text, pictures, and reasoning to support an argument or position. The teacher asks students to express their opinions, beliefs and explanations.

How do you know that?

What makes you think that?

Teacher Actions/Behaviors

11.The teacher increases the effectiveness of instructional conversations by designing and delivering instruction that provides:

• extra support to initially practice new language correctly

• extra opportunities to practice new language to a fluent level.

Teacher Actions/Behaviors

The Role of the Teachers in Final Instructional Conversation Stage

Directive

• talking at

• telling how and why

• giving solutions

• telling students what to say

Facilitator/Learning Manager

• talking with

• asking how and why

• helping students craft solutions

• helping students express themselves

Teacher Abilities

Ability to multi-task

Ability to engage all students in meaningful interaction enhancing their learning

Ability to maintain an appropriate

sense of timing and pacing

Ability to group effectively Ability to use appropriate

questioning techniquesAbility to

scaffoldlanguage

development

A Critical Consideration

Classroom Organization/Management

Grouping Students

• Individual• Group • Partner

– Teacher-student– Student-student– Student-teacher/other students

Classmates and Teacher

Groups of Students

Pairs

Student

Challenges to Using Structured

Conversations In Language Teaching

Challenge 1: We tend to acquire the language of those with whom we associate.

““Practice does not make Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice perfect. Only perfect practice

makes perfect.”makes perfect.” …………..…………..Vince LombardiVince Lombardi

Students learn new language by correctly practicing the language repeatedly until the language is mastered.

Correctly using language again and again leads to

accuracy and fluency.

Practice Makes Perfect

If you practice a feature of language incorrectly, you can learn it incorrectly!

Practice Makes Permanent!

How Much Practice is Needed?

Number of correct repetitions in a row of a new word needed to “automatize” the word - NICHD

Type of Learner Number of Repetitions

Most Able 1 or 2

Average 4-14

Least Able 20+ (?)

(R. Lyon, 1997)

Challenge 2: Students often use informal, basic forms of language in all contexts--even when formal, more complex language is required.

Challenge 3: Students who are just beginning to acquire language will have difficulty participating in conversations.

Challenge 4: Some students may be shy and not want to talk, while others might want to grab the floor and dominate the conversation.

Challenge 5: In large classrooms, noise from conversation groups may prevent students from hearing one another.

Challenge 6: Teachers may not know how to teach language, model it, and provide sufficient opportunities for students to practice it.

Using Questions Effectively

• Using wait time

• Rephrasing questions

• Using a sequence of questions

• Using leveled questions, properly sequenced

Encouraging Student Response

Teachers can increase student opportunities to respond by:

• Using a rapid pacing of instruction• Allowing choral and multiple responses

Students’ rates of developing fluency and accuracy are proportional to the rate at which they respond correctly. Giving students more opportunities to respond is a way to increase their rates of learning.

Adapted from David Howe 2006

Individual Responses in Whole Class Discussions

Teachers can maximize student engagement by:

• not calling on students with their hands raised

• asking a question and then calling on all students

• calling on low performers more often

Adapted from David Howe 2006

Table Talk: Describe how teachers can use structured conversations to teach specific features of language. Choose one of the following:

– Any five fixed expressions (such as high poverty rate)

– Past tense verb endings (verb + ed)– Conditional clauses (with if)– Explanations with the word because

Making Connections

Instructional Activities

• Used in structured conversations…

Close Reading

Close-Reading Questions• What is the author trying

to say here?• What do you think the

author wants us to know?• What is the author talking

about?• So what does the author

mean right here?

• Does that make sense with what the author told us before?

• How does that fit in with what the author told us?

• But does the author tell us why?

• Why do you think the author tells us that now?

From: Carol Jago, 2005.

Teachers can ask students to describe something they have read about. For example, teachers can ask students to describe characters. They can give their students lists of words and expressions the students might use.

Descriptions

Description:  The Three Step Interview is a cooperative structure that helps students personalize their learning and listen to and appreciate the ideas and thinking of others.  Active listening and paraphrasing by the interviewer develops understanding and empathy for the thinking of the interviewee.

Three-Step Interview

1.     Students work in pairs.  One is the interviewer, the other is the interviewee.  The interviewer listens actively to the comments and thoughts of the interviewee, paraphrasing key points and significant details.2.     Student pairs reverse roles, repeating the interview process.3.     Each pair then joins another pair to form groups of four.  Students introduce their pair partner and share what the partner had to say about the topic at hand.

Three-Step Interview

Use word banks and sentence starters to ensure language development.

78

My favorite food is…I like to

eat…

Our Favorite Foods:

- Pizza- Ice cream- Tacos - Pears- Pasta- Cake

I think an apple is healthy

because…

Healthy Unhealthy

Healthy foods are foods

that…

Three-Step Interview On Healthy Foods

Converting Informal Language into Formal

Language

.Teachers can ask students to convert informal language into formal language with a partner before asking students to discuss the Characteristics of informal and formal language in small group conversations.

Informal Language Academic Language

Conversations with Literature Logs

Teachers can ask students to share their literature logs or their journal entries.

Discussions about Words

• Teachers can lead whole class conversations • about words.• See Beck et al. (Bringing Words to Life)• Splendid: Which of these would be splendid?

– A dirty sock– A sunny day in the park– Your own bicycle– A rainy day

Discussions about Words

They can ask students to generate examples• Tell about something you would be reluctant to do. Try to use

reluctant when you tell about it.• You could start by saying something like. “I am reluctant to ___”

They can have students answer questions/give reasons• Why am I reluctant to eat a new food?• Why is a child reluctant to come here?• Show me how a reluctant broccoli eater would look.

They can then get students to use the word in more extended interactions. Describe three things you are reluctant to do. I am reluctant to . . . Swim in the ocean when it is cold; . . .

From Beck et al. Bringing Words to Life.

From Beck et al.

• Which of these would “astound” you?– a monkey driving a car– a homework assignment to do 10 problems

in math– a magic trick by a friend– a clock on the wall

Conversational Strategies

Request information

Guess judiciously

Use visuals

Use pause fillers

Ask questions; request clarification

Rely on others for help

Keep the conversation going

RespondTo Ideas

Think While SpeakingCommunicate

When Things Don’t Make Sense

Oral Language Development

• Teacher comments to prompt student language use (See handout.)

Sentence Stems

Vocabulary

• In creating a sentence stem, the teacher normally provides the beginning of a sentence. The sentence starter should be carefully constructed so the students show their level of knowledge of a word by the way in which they complete it.

• Sample stems include:

• Dad got mad when I upset the paints because ...

• When he leaned back in his chair...

• My mom will panic if...

Adapted from: Vocabulary Instruction for English Language Learners

Educator's Voice - April 21, 2008  by Katie KurjakovicUnited Federation of Teachers, New York City.

• Sentence starters can also be used to teach grammar.

• Modal Auxiliaries

• I may…

• I should…

• I must…

• I might not…

• I could not…

• If sentences

• If I were the president/teacher/principal, I would…

• If I had one million dollars, I would…

Sentence Stems

Language function

Explanation Sentence Starters

To instruct Giving directions "The first step is …"

"Next …"

"The last part is …"

To test Deciding if something makes sense

"I still have a question about …"

"What I learned is …"

To compare and contrast

Showing how two things are alike and different

"X and Y are similar because…"

"X and Y are different from each other because …"

To explain Giving examples "This is an example of …"

"This is important because …"

To ana lyze Discussing the parts of a larger idea

"The parts of this include …"

To hypo thesize Making a prediction based on what is known

"I can predict that …"

"I believe that … will happen because …"

"What might happen if …?"

Sentence Stems

To deduce Drawing a conclusion or arriving at an answer

"The answer is because …"

To eva luate Judging something "I agree with this because …"

"I disagree because …"

"I recommend that …"

"A better solution would be …"

"The factors that are most important are …"

To add to others’ ideas

Adding additional information or ideas

I would add that…

Then again, I think that…

I want to expand on your point about…

To request clarification

Requesting others clarify their remarks

What do you mean by…?

Can you tell me more about …?

To e laborate and/or clarify

Elaborating and clarifying what has been said

I think ___ means that…

In other words…

To paraphrase and summarize

Paraphrasing and summarizing what has already been said.

We can say that…

The main points we have been discussing are…

To summarize the main points of this discussion, I believe we have said…

• Adapted from: Content-Area Conversations by Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey and Carol Rothenberg. LAS Links: http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/108035/chapters/Procedures_for_Classroom_Talk.aspx

• See also: Zwiers, J. (2008). Building academic language: Essential practices for content classrooms. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Sentence Stems

For Discussion

With a partner or in small groups, discuss these questions:

1) From your own experience, which oral activities do you feel are the most effective? Share your favorites.

2) Which activities do you feel might be helpful in motivating students to use new language in their interactions?

Structured conversations make a difference!