Social Language Vs. Academic Language

Do you have an ELL student who seems to speak perfect English?

Social Language

For many(but not all) ELL students listening and speaking in English are the first language areas that develop. For very new speakers they may go through a quiet period where they are quite apprehensive about using what they know. Once students begin speaking in English it can develop quite quickly but often they are primarily developing their social language. Social language is what they encounter consistently throughout their day. Whether they are talking to teachers or other students there are many words that they will hear over and over. This repetition of words and phrases builds the foundation of the student's language development. Many ELL students exhibit strong social language skills. This can be deceiving because they seemingly need less support in the content areas, when actually they have very little academic vocabulary.

Academic Language

Watch this video first...You will be tested on this information.

Academic language, also called content specific language,  can be difficult even for native English speakers. Whenever someone is learning a new concept one on the first hurdles is to learn the vocabulary associated with that concept. This is true for all academic concepts that students encounter in school. For many native  English speakers this learning curve is less because they have often encountered many of the words before, but it can still be daunting. Academic vocabulary is not typically used in everyday conversations and may only be encountered in the school environment. For many ESL students (and English speakers as well) this vocabulary must be explicitly taught.


For more information see these two articles:

http://www.colorincolorado.org/educators/background/academic/ 

http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/106048/chapters/How-Students-Acquire-Social-and-Academic-Language.aspx