Delia Pompa: Hello. I'm Delia Pompa. Welcome to the Colorín Colorado webcast series. Today we're going to talk about academic language for English language learners. Joining me is Dr. Robin Scarcella. She is the Professor and Director of the Program in academic language and ESL at the University of California Irvine campus.
So, long title. It must be an important topic. What is academic language?
Dr. Robin Scarcella: Academic language is a language used in school context. It's the language of text. It's a language of prestige and power in the United States. And those who have acquired academic language tend to go on and become very successful in academic settings.
Unfortunately, those students who do not apply our academic language oftentimes fail and sometimes end up dropping out of school.
Delia Pompa: I believe you brought an example to share with us.
Dr. Robin Scarcella: Yes, I did. I brought these two letters from my student Vaughn. Vaughn came from Vietnam at age five. And she went through all of our public schools. And you can see that she wrote this letter because she was really distraught. Because she'd been placed in a beginning level English as a second language writing course at the University of California Irvine.
I was the Director of the Program. And she was my student. She did not want to be in this class. And so she wrote this letter. And she actually brought all her work from her high school. And she had poetry to share with me. And she had essays and a variety of different written work.
All of which was written in a very interesting style of informal, everyday English. It wasn't academic. And so she wrote this beautiful letter saying that she had read many books, that she had written and spoken English since-she said-"since time I come to the U.S."
And all her friends speak English. She always speaks English with her friends in the dorm, and she "reads many book," she writes. "Please do not makes me lose the face. I have competent in English."
Delia Pompa: And so you then put her through a program of instruction.
Dr. Robin Scarcella: Even though she received straight A's in English in high school, I had to put her in my ESL academic English sequence of three courses. And at the end of the year, she wrote the second letter.
Delia Pompa: And so, in the second letter, you could tell the difference.
Dr. Robin Scarcella: You can see this amazing difference in her vocabulary, in her grammatical development, even in her rhetoric. "Hi, Robin," she begins. And then she goes on and she asks for a letter of recommendation. Well, she does get this letter. She does actually get an internship in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Robin Scarcella: And then she goes on after she graduates from UCI into graduate school. And you can see what excellent English she uses. Now, is her English perfect? Native English? No, of course not. But it's very good.
Delia Pompa: She's got all the conventions. And she's got academic language.
Dr. Robin Scarcella: She can go into any field she wants to.