RR - Academic Language for ELLS discussion

p.79 The authors bring up some interesting points on why students do not remain engaged in reading once they reach the middle grades. Get ready for my academic language - I thought, "well, duh!" when I read it. But this is actually on of the reasons I am looking at integration of content areas for secondary students. When students reach the middle grades, there is a disconnect between content areas and daily lives. We now compartmentalize knowledge, no longer encourage literary freedom of choice, and most learning becomes abstract rather than applicable to personal experience. When you add language deficiencies to that mix, students become discouraged and withdraw.

What do you think is the more important function of school, to increase functional language in society, or to increase the ability to use academic language for mastery and eventual success in school?

Several things that are frustrating for ELL's is that when reading expository texts, even slightly higher than the students's ability level, I feel that a student can get lost in the use of the passive voice. According to the text, pg. 73, the use of the passive voice leads to the subjects in sentences being very general or unnamed, thus rendering the text even more confusing than just not understanding the vocabulary.

So something I want to think about is not just ideas in how to teach the words, but methods in which the words are going to be presented in academic texts.

Ideally, school should be teaching for mastery and eventual success not only in school but also in the workplace.

I completely agree about the passive voice issue. And the circular thinking. Isn't it amazing that those very aspects we shun in literature are what we subject ourselves to in academic/professional texts. ICK! (another very academic term for you.) Case in point: take a look at the Cummins quote on page 41. What a nightmare! Can you imagine anyone, much less ELLs trying to read that if they weren't already very familiar with the terminology? Then throw in the over abundance of acronyms in academic texts, and you've got a goulash unfit for consumption by ELLs or a lot of SELs (love those acronyms).