Academic Language Development Flashcards

Content-Based Language Instruction (CBLI) integrates language teaching with academic content primarily because:

Answer: Language is best acquired in meaningful, subject-matter contexts rather than in isolation

CBLI reflects the principle that language acquisition is more effective when driven by authentic communicative purposes tied to meaningful content.

In the context of academic language development, 'discourse competence' refers to a student's ability to:

Answer: Organize and connect ideas coherently across sentences and paragraphs

Discourse competence involves understanding and producing extended, coherent language—such as writing a structured argument or following an academic lecture.

The 'iceberg model' proposed by Jim Cummins illustrates that BICS and CALP:

Answer: Share a common underlying proficiency that transfers across languages

Cummins' iceberg model shows BICS as the visible tip and CALP as the deeper shared foundation, meaning academic proficiency in L1 supports CALP development in L2.

When a BEA candidate designs instruction, scaffolding for academic language development should be:

Answer: Gradually withdrawn as students gain proficiency, promoting increasing independence

Effective scaffolding is temporary and intentionally reduced as students internalize skills, following Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development framework.

Which instructional strategy best supports ELs in developing academic writing skills across content areas?

Answer: Providing sentence frames and academic writing frames tied to disciplinary text structures

Sentence frames and disciplinary writing frames give ELs the language structures they need to express academic ideas while they simultaneously develop English proficiency.

In a bilingual classroom, which practice best leverages cross-linguistic transfer to build academic language?

Answer: Teaching cognates explicitly to connect L1 and L2 academic vocabulary

Explicit cognate instruction leverages the shared vocabulary between languages (especially Spanish-English) to accelerate academic vocabulary development.