83English Journal 106.5 (2017): 83–85

Lingua Anglia: Bridging Language and Learners

Pamela J. Hickey, Column Editor

What You Say Matters: Exploring Teacher Talk in Linguistically Diverse ClassroomsTarie Lewis State University of New York at New Paltz lewist@newpaltz.edu

J. Carey Fusco University at Albany, SUNYjfusco@albany.edu

Walk past any classroom, in any school, and you will hear teacher talk. Teachers talk as they help students focus on the tasks for the day, as they guide students through lessons, and as they facil-itate discussions. Teachers talk to explain, direct, question, and prompt. But who is benefiting from this teacher talk, and who is not? Is it possible that the sheer amount of teacher talk or the par-ticular grammar or words that teachers use might be a factor in student achievement?

While many studies have explored the impact of specific vocabulary teaching strategies on secondary students’ academic vocabulary learning, a series of recent studies in ELA middle school classrooms focuses on the impact of a different variable: teachers’ instructional language.

with academic language is essen-tial to academic success (Scarcella; Snow).

For many years, educational researchers have emphasized the importance of the classroom lan-guage environment in build-ing young children’s vocabulary. However, the role of teachers’ lin-guistic input has not been fully explored in secondary settings. Perla B. Gámez and Nonie K. Lesaux sought to extend previ-ous research to older students as they explored whether students of teachers who used more academic language during their classroom talk showed increases in their vocabulary and reading compre-hension (“Early- Adolescents,” “Relation”). To do this, they recorded and transcribed sixth- grade ELA teachers’ classroom talk and analyzed their use of academic language. Across 14 economically and linguistically diverse schools, Gámez and Lesaux examined two specific aspects of academic lan-guage: usage of words and clauses.

Words

One reason that academic language poses challenges is that it is com-posed of words that are less likely to be used in everyday conversation. For example, rare words such as metonymy and archipelago are related

This column highlights compel-ling findings for English teachers who are working to meet the lit-eracy needs of their linguistically diverse students— both Emergent Bilinguals (formerly referred to as “English language learners”) and students who speak English as their first language (L1s).

Academic Language

Academic language varies from everyday language use in several distinct ways such as which words and syntactic structures are used (Schleppegrell). Academic lan-guage is characterized by a higher proportion of nouns, morpholog-ically complex words, and words that are not typically used out-side of academic contexts. These features result in language that is more information dense and more abstract than everyday language (Nagy and Townsend).

Research confirms that lan-guage and vocabulary knowledge play a critical role in reading comprehension (Biemiller; Nagy and Scott). In particular, as stu-dents progress into secondary settings, the texts they encoun-ter contain greater proportions of academic language (Nagy and Anderson). Accordingly, instruc-tion that boosts students’ facility

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84 May 2017

What You Say Matters: Exploring Teacher Talk in Linguistically Diverse Classrooms

proficiency, it did not help them either. So while teacher talk alone might positively affect some stu-dents, these results indicate that other EBs who have lower levels of English proficiency might need additional linguistic instruction and support to further their aca-demic vocabulary knowledge.

Teachers’ Talk and Reading Comprehension

Similar to the positive results described above, after controlling for income level and students’ previous reading comprehension level, teachers’ use of rare and academic words was significantly related to increases in students’ reading comprehension scores on two measures. This was equally true for L1s and EBs. The authors point out this finding indicates that teachers’ use of academic lan-guage in the classroom might cur-rently be an underused resource that can support students’ reading comprehension.

What Does This Mean for Teachers?

Overall, the findings discussed above show that teacher talk mat-ters. Specifically, what teachers say and how they say it has poten-tial for supporting and advancing vocabulary and reading compre-hension skills of learners, both L1s and EBs. Given these findings, we encourage teachers to consider the language environments in their classrooms in the following ways: (1) Investigate: Find out more about academic language. The more you know about the charac-teristics of academic language, the better prepared you are to model

utterances was calculated, some teachers used more than twice as much academic language as other teachers.

Interestingly, teachers’ use of academic language did not differ based on free and reduced- price lunch rates or the percentage of Emergent Bilingual students in the classroom. Additionally, teachers’ talk did not change sig-nificantly over the school year. Thus, Gámez and Lesaux suggest that instead of characteristics of the students driving the amount and type of teacher talk, perhaps teachers just have a “personal style of speaking” that they bring to the classroom (“Relation” 1327). This premise is supported by the finding that both academic and rare words were more common in teacher’s spontaneous speech than in their speech related to direct instruction.

Teachers’ Talk and Vocabulary Growth

Just hearing a teacher talk more did not result in students learning more vocabulary. However, there was a significant positive rela-tionship between teachers’ use of more rare words and students’ aca-demic vocabulary growth. All stu-dents, Emergent Bilinguals (EBs) and L1s, showed this pattern of growth.

A different pattern emerged in relation to teachers’ use of clauses. Only L1s and EBs with higher English language profi-ciency levels showed statistically significant benefits from teacher talk that contained higher lev-els of multiple clauses. Although speech with more clauses did not negatively affect EBs with lower

What Gámez and Lesaux Learned

Teacher Talk Varies

The studies documented that teachers can differ greatly from one another in how much they talk in the classroom. Teachers also differed in their use of aca-demic language. Specifically, when the proportion of talk that contained rare words and clausal

to specific disciplinary knowledge in literature and geology. William E. Nagy and Dianna Townsend also point out that academic language uses lower- frequency synonyms such as dine instead of eat and exist instead of be (93). Additionally, academic words such as analysis and derived are used across content areas (Coxhead 231– 32). To gauge teachers’ use of these words in these studies, high frequency words were eliminated from the teachers’ transcripts. Then, the number of rare words each teacher used was calculated.

Sentence Structure

Academic language contains clauses that differ from everyday conversation (Schleppegrell). To examine use of syntax aligned with academic language, the number of multiple clauses teach-ers used— subordinate and depen-dent clauses— was calculated.

When the proportion of talk

that contained rare words

and clausal utterances was

calculated, some teachers used

more than twice as much

academic language as other

teachers.

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85English Journal

Lingua Anglia: Bridging Language and Learners

Middle School Classroom- Language Environment.” Developmental Psy-chology, vol. 51, no. 4, 2015, pp. 447– 58.

— — — . “The Relation between Expo-sure to Sophisticated and Complex Language and Early- Adolescent English- Only and Language Minority Learners’ Vocabulary.” Child Development, vol. 83, no. 4, 2012, pp. 1316– 31.

Nagy, William E., and Richard C. Anderson. “How Many Words Are There in Printed School English?” Reading Research Quarterly, vol. 19, 1984, pp. 304– 30.

Nagy, William E., and Judith A. Scott. “Vocabulary Processes.” Handbook of Reading Research, edited by Michael L. Kamil et al., vol. 3, Erlbaum, 2000, pp. 269– 84.

Nagy, William E., and Dianna Townsend. “Words as Tools: Learn-ing Academic Vocabulary as Lan-guage Acquisition.” Reading Research Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 1, 2012, pp. 91– 108.

Scarcella, Robin C. Accelerating Aca-demic English: A Focus on the Learner. Regents of the U of California, 2003.

Schleppegrell, Mary J. The Language of Schooling: A Functional Linguistics Perspective. Routledge, 2004.

Snow, Catherine E. “Academic Lan-guage and the Challenge of Reading for Learning about Science.” Science, vol. 328, 2010, pp. 450– 52.

and teach it. Resources are listed in the sidebar. (2) Reflect: Given the great variation in teacher talk recorded in these studies, examine your personal style of speaking. An easy way to do this is to record yourself using your cell phone and just listen. Think about the vocabulary and syntax you use. Do you see opportunities to model aspects of academic language that can advance students’ learning?

(3) Talk: Gámez and Lesaux are careful to point out that their find-ings do not mean that teachers should talk more at the expense of student talk. Nor do they assert that simple exposure to some aspects of academic language is enough for all students to progress. However, given that teachers’ use of rare and academic words influenced students’ vocabulary and reading comprehension, it is worth teach-ers’ time to plan for and implement purposeful and meaningful instruc-tion that includes academic lan-guage. As these studies show, what you say does matter!

Works Cited

Biemiller, Andrew. “Vocabulary Devel-opment and Instruction: A Pre-requisite for School Learning.” Handbook of Early Literacy Research, edited by David K. Dickinson and Susan B. Neuman, vol. 2, Guilford Press, 2006, pp. 41– 51.

Coxhead, Averil. “A New Academic Word List.” TESOL Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 2, 2000, pp. 213– 38.

Gámez, Perla B., and Nonie K. Lesaux. “Early- Adolescents’ Reading Com-prehension and the Stability of the

Resources

Colorín Colorado Academic Lan-guage Resource Page

www.colorincolorado.org/academic- language

Academic Word List (Coxhead)

www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist/

Voices from the Middle, vol. 20, no. 4, May 2013

Theme: Teaching the Language of School and Academics

www.ncte.org/journals/vm/issues/v20- 4

Tarie Lewis is a lecturer in literacy education at the State University of New York at New Paltz and a doctoral student at the University at Albany, SUNY. J. Carey Fusco is a literacy coach in the City School District of Albany and a doctoral student at the University at Albany, SUNY.

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