Co-authored by Lucy Blakemore, Deborah Nixon and Agi Bodis.
‘Academic English’ isn’t anyone’s first language (thank goodness!), but learning specific ways of reading, analysing, critiquing and writing is an important part of how students develop their professional identities in many university contexts. Think about it: as a learner, at what point did you learn to speak fluent ‘Academic English’? What about the specialist terms, expressions or writing formats common to your profession – did someone teach you those, or have you picked them up over time, gradually forgetting what it felt like not to know them at all?
Here we share some highlights and thoughts following a seminar moderated by UTS Chancellor’s Research Fellow Dr Alexandra Grey, who researches law and policy responses to linguistic diversity. Together with panel members Dr Elaine Laforteza, Dr Agi Bodis (Macquarie University) and Dr Deborah Nixon, the seminar discussed how we can design learning and assessments better to develop the language skills graduates need, whilst acknowledging the multilingual strengths our students bring too.
Case in point: the language of law
The UTS Faculty of Law recognises that learning to read legal materials and write or talk like a lawyer involves new language registers, terms and practices for all students, whether they come from English-speaking backgrounds or not. With linguistically diverse cohorts the norm, many staff work hard to provide equitable learning opportunities as part of an ongoing system of supports for all students.
Like other faculties at UTS, all commencing law students are screened through the Online Post-Enrolment Language Assessment (OPELA). Students who receive a result that indicates a need for language support attend compulsory Language Development Tutorials (LDTs) where language support is embedded within the discipline context. In Law LDTs, this includes:
- Reading and writing in the discipline; grammar, genre and style
- Understanding assessment tasks through analysing: topic (what is it?), verbs (what do I have to do?), and limitations (time frames, resources, topic, etc.)
- Academic integrity
- Emboldening seminar/ tutorial participation (speaking)
Whilst law has specific requirements, including a detailed guide to written communication, there are principles we can apply more broadly to enable and support student learning.
Inclusive strategies to support the learning process
When we know our discipline inside out, it’s easy to forget what it’s like to be the learner, navigating core concepts and language for the first time. We also need to recognise that there is a spectrum of students, with diverse ways of visible and invisible participation and engagement.
We can support these different ways of learning before, during and at the end of a class with strategies such as:
- Before class: make materials available to students beforehand; provide focus questions to encourage purposeful reading; ask students to summarise key points and bring these to class.
- Starting a class: review pre-class materials; include informal conversation to build comfort and confidence in smaller groups; ask students to write a question at the beginning of the class and check in at the end to see if they were answered
- During class: use a range of media to explain key concepts, technical knowledge or complex ideas; try to support spoken explanations with visuals like diagrams, images, and notes on a whiteboard; if students are struggling with a concept, try different ways of explaining it (ask students to google definitions, or to find a YouTube clip that illustrates a concept).
- Extending and practising new knowledge: try not to rush, making space for both deep and broad understanding; provide opportunities for students to talk and write about what they are learning, which helps them practise the discourse of their discipline and can give you insights into how well they understand.
- At the end of a class: spend 2 minutes summarising key learning outcome(s); make time for questions and remind students what to do before the next class. If you were working through difficult concepts, allow time for students to write a one-minute paper, where they summarise what they learned and write any remaining questions; you can collect the papers and use as a starting point for the next class, or suggest further reading on the questions they have identified.
Make it clear: scaffolding and assessment
Scaffolding communication skills is an approach advocated and adopted by many language and literacy educators, and refers to the explicit teaching of the structure, language and presentation of particular types of texts. A good starting point is to make your own tacit knowledge of the structure, language and presentation of the texts explicit in your learning and teaching activities, assessment design, marking criteria, and feedback to students.
For assessment tasks, this might mean small but significant changes such as simplifying instructions and paying attention to the design and order of things. Providing templates and sharing samples of writing is also very useful to show students what ‘good’ writing looks like in your discipline. In addition, you could use a core reading to teach reading and writing by identifying the rhetorical patterns in a text that indicate a position or argument, introduce evidence, or come to a conclusion.
All the knowledges we cannot see
As we help students to navigate unfamiliar academic systems and language, it is just as important to acknowledge what they also bring with them to learning – including, as Elaine Laforteza points out, their names and identities. Although English may be the official ‘academic language’ at an Australian university, our workplaces and societies are made up of many other cultures, each of which has its own insights and knowledges to share. Imagine how much learning we’re missing when that cultural and linguistic exchange is only in one direction?