Language & Literacy

Language is the everpresent medium of teaching and learning, the element that infuses every classroom interaction. Yet, how often do we explicitly plan the content, structure, and quality of this critical element?

While we meticulously map out and prepare for the activities we engage our students in, the specific linguistic structures and vocabulary we employ often remains implicit, almost accidental. This raises critical questions: which aspects of our classroom talk truly accelerate literacy – is it sheer volume, vocabulary precision, or syntactic complexity? And how can we become more deliberate and intentional architects of this vital linguistic environment for all students, including those developing multi-dialectalism and multilingualism?

My recent presentation at ResearchED in NYC ventured into this territory, examining the research on how the linguistic environment we curate can influence student literacy achievement.

The Power of Classroom Talk: More Than Just Words

Why this focus on classroom talk? Because literacy isn't built in a vacuum. While foundational skills like decoding and spelling are absolutely critical (and have for all too long been sidelined), the elementary ELA block at large all too often focuses on isolated skills.

Despite elementary schools in the U.S. dedicating significantly more time to ELA than any other subject, reading scores (like those from state ELA tests or the more nationally normed NAEP) often remain stubbornly flat, including here in NYC. This prompts a crucial question: is simply adding more ELA time the answer, or do we need to rethink how we build literacy—both within and beyond ELA?

This is where focusing on content-rich talk across the content areas becomes vital. Subjects like social studies, science, math, and the arts offer fertile ground for developing the academic language and background knowledge that underpin strong literacy. In fact, some research suggests this cross-curricular approach may be more effective for reading comprehension than simply adding more ELA time. For example, a 2020 study by the Fordham Institute found that increased instructional time in social studies—but not additional time in ELA—was associated with improved reading comprehension for elementary students (Tyner & Kabourek, 2020). Notably, the students who benefited most from additional social studies time included girls and those from lower-income and non-English-speaking homes. Tackling the challenge of building a strong foundation begins, fundamentally, with the language we choose to use and explicitly teach across all subjects.

Yet social studies—and other content areas—occupy an increasingly small portion of an elementary student’s learning (more recent RAND paper on this).

The Problem We Face

This focus is critical because many students, particularly in the K-5 grades, can encounter significant hurdles in developing robust literacy and language skills that are essential for academic success. These challenges can be particularly acute for multiidialectal or multilingual learners navigating academic language demands alongside or in addition to their home language(s). Key challenges include:

• Foundational Skills Gaps: Some students do not receive the focused instruction and practice they need in decoding and spelling to become fluent readers and writers.
• Knowledge and Language Gaps: Many students lack consistent and cohesive opportunities to build the background knowledge and language necessary to understand complex topics across different subjects, while building on and connecting to the cultures, schema, and languages they bring.
• Complex Language Exposure: The majority of students need more exposure to, and structured practice with, reading, writing, and talking using the complex language inherent in disciplinary discourse and texts.

What the Research Says: Listening In on Learning

I used the wonderful study by Jeanne Wanzek, Carla Wood, and Christopher Schatschneider, which I have highlighted in this blog before as the anchor for my presentation. Using LENA devices to record classroom instruction, they found:

• Teachers, on average, used relatively few academic or curriculum-specific vocabulary words.
• Crucially, teachers who did use more academic words had students demonstrating higher vocabulary achievement by the end of the school year. This held true even when controlling for the teachers' overall expressive vocabulary and across students with varying incoming abilities.
  • The takeaway: The specific words we choose during instruction have a measurable link to student vocabulary growth, a crucial component of academic success for all learners.

Correlation or Causation? Towards Stronger Links

Correlation, of course, isn't causation. Does using more academic language cause better outcomes, or do teachers with higher-achieving students simply use more academic language? While the Wanzek et al. study is correlational, a growing body of research points towards a causal link between targeted language exposure/instruction and improved outcomes. Here’s just a smattering:

• Conversational Turns: Interventions increasing parent-child conversational turns led to language skill improvements and predicted neurocognitive changes (Romeo et al., 2021).
• Mathematical Language: An RCT using dialogic reading to boost mathematical language positively impacted preschoolers' general math skills (Purpura et al., 2017).
• Classroom Math Talk: Teachers using more mathematical language were found to be more effective at raising student test scores in upper elementary grades (Himmelsbach et al., 2024).
• Content Literacy: A sustained literacy intervention grounded in science and social studies content led to lasting improvements in vocabulary, reading comprehension (across domains), and even math, demonstrating far transfer effects (Kim et al., 2024).
  • The takeaway: The pattern across these studies strongly suggests that actively improving the language environment through intentional instruction yields real results in student learning, with content-rich instruction showing particular promise for multilingual learners

Defining and Developing Academic Language

So, what is this “academic language” we're aiming for? It's the formal, complex, often abstract and decontextualized language common in school, texts, and professional settings (NYSED, Lesaux & Philips Galloway; Philips Galloway et al., 2019). Since this language isn't always prevalent outside school, the classroom becomes the primary place many students will learn it, making our role crucial, especially in fostering academic language development for multilingual learners.

Understanding how language typically develops—and recognizing that multilingual development adds further layers of complexity and potential cognitive benefits—helps us see where to intervene and build bridges for students:

1. Contextualized Interaction: Early conversational turns, rooted in the immediate environment.
2. Oral Storytelling: Moves towards abstraction, requiring inference and schema-building beyond the 'here and now'.
3. Shared Reading: Introduces more decontextualized language—denser vocabulary, complex sentences, formal structures typical of written text (I’ve rounded up a list of studies related to this).
4. Written Language: Characterized by rarer, more abstract words, complex syntax (like nominalizations, passive voice, relative clauses), and formal discourse structures

Our instruction aims to help students navigate this journey towards greater precision and abstraction. Leveraging students' home languages can serve as a powerful bridge along this continuum.

Explicit Teaching Meets Implicit Learning: Achieving “Escape Velocity”

So, how do we teach this complex language effectively?

While explicit teaching of vocabulary or grammar acts as a necessary accelerator, it works best when launching students into an environment rich with coherent and cohesive implicit learning opportunities. This explicit scaffolding is vital for all learners navigating complex academic language, and particularly crucial for multidialectal and multilingual students acquiring these structures in the more formal English used in school. Mark Seidenberg calls this synergy achieving “escape velocity”—where explicit instruction scaffolds and enables students to learn powerfully from the sheer volume of language they encounter through reading, writing, and discussion. Our goal is to engineer this velocity for all learners.

As we’ve also explored on this blog, part of building this velocity is about providing our kids with more texts and more talk—”textual feasts,” as Dr. Tatum calls it.

Putting Research into Practice: Classroom Strategies

How can we intentionally weave denser and more complex academic language into our daily practice, while valuing and leveraging the linguistic diversity of our students? It involves concrete, planned actions:

1. Plan to Amplify Knowledge & Language:

   • Identify core concepts in a unit/text.
   • Pinpoint the essential academic vocabulary used to explain these concepts.
   • Explore morphology and etymology (e.g., using tools like Etymonline) to deepen understanding, including potential cross-linguistic connections.
   • Analyze how these words function in different sentences and contexts.
   • Plan structured opportunities for students to practice reading, writing, and speaking with these words.

2. Leverage Multimodal Text Sets: Immerse students in a topic through various texts (articles, books, videos, images) and modalities. This creates multiple, varied exposures to related concepts and vocabulary.

3. Structured Supplements for Read-Alouds: Don't just read; enhance read-alouds by providing concise definitions, examples, asking stimulating questions that require using target vocabulary, connecting to prior knowledge, and using concept maps (Mosher & Kim,, 2025). Consider incorporating home language previews or connections where appropriate.

1. Explicitly Teach Morphology & Leverage Cross-Linguistic Connections: Build awareness of word parts (prefixes, suffixes, roots) and connections between words across languages. This is especially powerful for multilingual learners; recognizing shared roots and patterns (like transparent/transparente) and using contrastive analysis between languages (like comparing verb forms) can unlock meaning and build metalinguistic awareness. Use a consistent multisyllabic word decoding strategy. Use tools like concept/semantic maps to help visualize connections, including across languages.

1. Structure Reading Instruction (Before, During, After): Be intentional about the purpose of each read:
   • Before: Build background, preview text and vocabulary. Activate or build relevant background knowledge, connecting to diverse student experiences.
   • During (1st Read): Focus on flow and gist, model fluency, check basic comprehension.
   • During (2nd Read): Zoom in on specific words, sentences, author's craft. Practice paraphrasing key details.
   • During (3rd Read): Analyze structure and language more deeply. Ask inferential questions.
   • After: Review, engage with target vocabulary/language, summarize, practice speaking/writing using mentor sentences and target words.
2. Zoom In and Amplify: When revisiting texts, strategically select specific words or sentences to focus on. Use routines (echo/choral reading, dictation, sentence combining, contrastive analysis) to deepen understanding and usage. (See the Zoom In and Amplify Menu resource for ideas).

These routines can often be adapted using contrastive analysis or strategic invitations to use and connect to home language for multilingual learners.

Moving Forward: The Bottom Line

The research is increasingly clear: the language we choose to use and teach matters. By consciously choosing to immerse students in rich, academic language within and across content areas, providing both explicit instruction and ample opportunities for implicit learning through meaningful interaction with texts and topics, we can significantly enhance language development and overall literacy achievement, creating more equitable opportunities for all students, including multidialectal and multilingual learners. It requires intentional planning and a shift towards seeing every teacher as a teacher of language, but the potential payoff for our students is enormous.

To effectively address the challenges and leverage the power of classroom talk, the evidence points towards these key actions:

• Recognize the crucial role academic language plays in student literacy development across all subjects, recognizing its importance most especially for students developing multilingualism
• Understand the interplay between explicit language instruction (the accelerator) and the implicit learning that occurs through rich language exposure (the fuel).
• Actively implement strategies to intentionally increase the quantity and quality of academic language used in classroom instruction and student interactions daily, leveraging students' diverse linguistic resources as assets.

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