Subject literacies and access to quality education, Council of Europe,
Strasbourg, 27 – 28 September 2012
Introduction to the seminar
E. Thürmann
It is a great pleasure and privilege to share with you my own views on the progress of the CoE´s
eminently important project on „Languages in and Languages for Education“ and – more specifically on work so far done on subject literacies. Since it is a working seminar, I shall not take up too much
of your time contextualizing the project in general – being well aware of the fact that Jean-Claude
Beacco will be first choice to set you on the tracks since he is intimately familiar with the Council´s
objectives, philosophies and working methods. However, before going in medias res and getting
down to the brass tacks of language competences relevant for successful learning in and across
subject areas, I should remind you of the major aims, main issues and working methods of this
seminar.
Major aims and objectives
There is little doubt among experts that mastery of the language of schooling (academic language,
Bildungssprache) is the most reliable track to school success and elevated socio-economic status
after graduating from school. Without it learners simply cannot “function” effectively neither in
language as a subject nor in mathematics, history or science classes. However, at the same time, we
are aware of the fact that the specific language variety of schooling is often been ignored or underemphasized in education. And what makes matters worse, is the fact that the distinguishing
characteristics of academic language as it is used in classroom interaction and the negotiation of
meaning, in textbooks, and for assessment are still fairly vague. An important component in
addressing the difficulties many students face is a deeper and more thorough conceptualization of
the language of schooling. Thus, two leading question for this seminar and the following main event
in 2013 are
 “How can educators provide learning opportunities for students to gain control over a
language variety which is crucial for successful learning in and across all school subjects and
extend their capacity to move freely across a broad spectrum of language varieties in and
out of school”
 Are frameworks for academic language use a viable option for mapping such learning
opportunities into curriculum guidelines?
This seminar is expected to explore potential answers by linking academic content standards to
academic language requirements as two sides of a medal, as two basic components of subject
literacy. These few introductory remarks might explain why the Council´s Language Policy Unit
invited experts for curriculum development on two levels: coordinators as well as subject specialists
for at least a fairly narrow but representative spectrum of content areas: language as a subject,
history, mathematics and science. This ambitious approach has become feasible because in Norway
and in North-Rhine-Westfalia state educational authorities have started to integrate academic
language issues into subject-specific curricula in a concept-driven, coordinated and reflected way
which will be presented and discussed this morning and after lunch.
In short, the main task of this 1.5 day working conference is to prepare the Council´s awarenessraising intergovernmental conference in 2013 on “Language Requirements in Subject Learning –
Frameworks for Curriculum Development”. That means we should
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take stock of CoE´s relevant documents on the role of language in knowledge building and
subject literacies
compare and contrast two approaches to framework construction (Norway, North-RhineWestfalia)
take stock of developments in other countries (educational contexts)
consider options for frameworks from the perspective of content domains (language as a
subject, history, mathematics, sciences)
reflect, discuss and recommend further action.
Issues and Priorities
Since I have the privilege to set the scene for this seminar and the pains and labours in the working
groups ahead, I shall take advantage of it highlighting four issues which – to my mind – are among
the most important ones for conceptualizing subject literacy and for modelling a framework
structure for the language of schooling.
What do we have to consider when talking about language use and language
requirements of the content classroom?
Language use in content classrooms is a very complex matter and far from being of uniform nature.
And we should not even think of trying to standardise it along
the lines of one specific variety. The reason for this strong
statement is that from a pedagogical point of view it makes no
sense at all to reduce classroom discourse to a standardised
pattern of language use. Classroom discourse depends on a
broad range of teacher-learner interactions as well of learnerlearner interactions, it takes on different modes
(conceptual/medial oral or written modes), implies different
skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking) and serves different
purposes supporting specific classroom activities, e.g.
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making social noise
organising classroom procedures and negotiating meaning
retrieving information and acquiring knowledge
(re-) structuring mental concepts
Communicating and presenting learning outcomes
Evaluating learning process and learning results.
Indeed, language use in content classrooms is a blend of language varieties. According to Bailey &
Heritage (2008) and Scarcella (2008) it is helpful to distinguish four different patterns of language use
or classroom varieties. They call them
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Basic colloquial language (BCL)
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School Navigational Language (SNL)
Essential Academic Language (EAL)
Curriculum Content Language (CCL).
For the majority of students the first two varieties do not cause major difficulties unless they are
newcomers with a migration background, having only little or no knowledge of the dominant
language of schooling. The seminar will focus on the latter two varieties (a) because they are relevant
for understanding and handling subject content, (b) because a larger proportion of students are not
familiar with these patterns of language use, (c) because school can intervene here with a reasonable
chance of success. Now, what do Bailey & Heritage and Scarcella mean by “Essential Academic
Language (EAL) and in which respect does it differ from “Curriculum Content Language (CCL)”? To my
mind, this distinction can be crucial for the success of this seminar. On the one hand, there are
language patterns which are used in more formal situations of content teaching and learning across
the curriculum (= Essential Academic Language, Language for Education, Bildungssprache), i.e. it can
be conceptualised as a cross-curricular overlap. On the other hand, there are certain patterns and
genres which are subject-specific. On a lexical level experts distinguish bricks and mortar words.
Mortar words are characteristic of language use in school as a specific discourse community. Brick
words are owned by specialist discourse communities, e.g. geographers in the following text.
“Scientists of the early 20th century believed that oceans and continents were geographically fixed.
They regarded the surface of the planet as a static skin
spread over a molten, gradually cooling interior. They
believed that the cooling of the planet resulted in its
contraction, which caused the outer skin to contort and
wrinkle into mountains and valleys. Many people noticed,
however, that the eastern shorelines of South America and
the western shoreline of Africa seemed to fit together like a
jigsaw puzzle. One scientist who took this observation
seriously was Alfred Wegener.”
(Smith, 2004, p. 44)
We all are well aware of the general characteristics of the two varieties, general academic language
and content-specific language. According to Martin Joos´ five
levels of style, language use for both academic varieties can be
characterised as more or less distant, decontextualized
objective, complex, highly structured, dispassionate, exact,
complete, unambiguous, explicit … The challenge for the
curriculum developer is to specify these abstract features in
cognitive-linguistic terms according to a structure which allows
a common approach across the curriculum. In other words,
curriculum developers, both the subject specialists and the coordinators, need a framework which
facilitates cross-curricular perspectives.
How can we bridge the gap between content standards and the academic language
implicit in these standards?
Across many educational systems curricular documents for content teaching appear to be more or
less indifferent to language requirements implicit in subject-specific content standards. Let´s have a
look at a randomly picked example from a biology curriculum for lower secondary education:
Students are able to …
identify similarities and differences as a result
of criteria-based comparisons, e.g. anatomy
and morphology of organisms.
As a rule, content standards focus on cognitive outcomes of learning implicitly emphasising
declarative knowledge which can be handled with low discourse complexity and a high
lexical/terminological load. However, quality education aims for deeply rooted sustainable
competences as learning and teaching results, which more or less reduces rote learning to a
minimum and places emphasis on exploring, hypothesising, experimenting, reflecting, exchanging
ideas. And this necessarily involves language activities. Thus, students are expected to handle
different semiotic systems (language, pictures, numbers, charts etc.) according to specific
conventional forms (text types, genres) in a specific mode (oral, written) for a given purpose
(discourse functions such as “define”, “describe”, “explain”). These specifications enable the learner
to adequately choose from mental repertoires of language / textual means. But curricula for subjects
like chemistry, history or mathematics specification for communicative-cognitive performance is left
to the individual teacher´s discretion. I think participants of this seminar (curriculum coordinators
and subject specialists alike) should reflect and discuss ways and means how curricular documents
for content teaching should incorporate language requirements.
At first sight that seems a trivial task. But there are some intricate questions which have to be tackled
before the specialists can do their work:
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Should individual subject-specific curricula include both (a) the language for education
(Bildungssprache, Essential Academic Language) as well as (b) the subject-specific language
requirements (Curriculum Content Language) – or should the general common core of
academic language be handed over to language specialists and their curricular documents for
language as a subject?
Are there commonalities across subsections of the curriculum (e.g. social sciences, sciences,
language artes) and how should curriculum developers handle them?
To which level of concreteness should expected language competences be specified with the
help of descriptors and indicators?
Can the language issue be left to the discretion of the subject specialists or should there be a
framework common for all content areas?
Recently, there have been first modest initiatives to bridge the
gap between content standards and the academic language
implicit in these standards. One of the more interesting
approaches is the project “Linking Academic Language to
Academic Standards” of the Centre for Equity and Excellence in
Education of the George Washington University. They have
developed a “Content Standards Language Analysis Tool” which
is a dynamically driven web-based system that allows teams of state, district-, and school-level
content and language educators to access the academic language associated with content standards.
Which options for a Framework structure?
I have to confess that a few years ago I was hoping for the Council of Europe to come up with an
authoritative “Common European Framework for Academic Language Use” comparable to the
enormously successful CEFR to facilitate and intensify language education on an international level
especially for the benefit of students at risks. My expectations have become very modest in the
meantime. Now I have come to acknowledge the difficulties resulting from educational and curricular
context factors across educational systems in Europe – especially when subject literacies are
concerned. Some countries teach physics others teach integrated science, some countries teach
history, others incorporate history into social sciences. I am convinced that these basic national /
regional curricular context factors necessitate national / regional frameworks. However, I have not
given up the hope that we might arrive at a common understanding of relevant dimensions for
specifying subject literacies, i.e. a framework structure which is adaptable to all conceivable
curricular layouts. Helmut Vollmer and myself, we have been working with a fairly complex
framework structure and which has turned out to be applicable to broad range of school subjects
and the specification of literacy descriptors for dimensions such as
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Semiotic systems, genres, text types
Cognitive-language functions
Discourse features and textuality
Language means (on the level of (a) words and
collocation, (b) sentences and phrases – morphosyntax
and (c) text).
So far, it has been proven to be a fairly valuable tool for
curriculum development which follows a two-pronged
approach: (a) as common ground and a reference structure for
content specialists, (b) as a “filter” curriculum coordinators to
detect and identify commonalities across the curriculum. Later
on in the seminar Helmut Vollmer will go into details and
explain the philosophy behind the system.
Which priorities for developing descriptors, defining curricular standards and their
implementation?
On a supra level (e.g. Council of Europe) to me the following fields of action seem to have priority:
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focus on a common framework structure which is compatible with aims and objectives of
subject teaching across the curriculum
support for filling the framework dimensions (e.g. genres, cognitive-language functions,
language means) with inventories of possible descriptors to choose from
application of general descriptors to specific subject areas, to a range of subject literacies.
On a macro level (ministries, national / regional / local authorities):
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Update and enrich curricular documents across the whole range of content areas by applying
a / the framework for language of education (essential academic language) as a coordinating
tool
Provide ressources for the training and the mission of „Literacy Coaches“
Update and enrich teachers´ professional policy profile accordingly and implement it through
teacher education
Recommend new strategies for textbook providers
On meso- and micro-levels (individual schools, teachers, classrooms):
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exploit school autonomy and strive for consensus of a whole-school language learning policy
(school-based language development plan)
set up an academic language analysis team to bridge the gap between content standards and
the academic language implicit in these standards
critical-friends approach to classroom observation using a set of criteria for languagesensitive subject teaching and learning
network with other schools focussing on subject literacy and language of education
On a nano-level (individual learner):
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invest in language of education and subject literacy to boost „cultural capital“
take notice of and adopt communicative strategies and textual patterns which help to solve
problems encountered in the learning process
be aware of his/her own socio-cultural background, language biography and its intrinsic
norms and values with respect to academic requirements
be willing and able to switch codes in and out of school according to situational
requirements.
Working methods
…..