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Academic Language Mastery: Grammar and Syntax in Context
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Academic Language Mastery: Grammar and Syntax in Context


Courses:
ESL Methods

August 2016 | 104 pages | Corwin

By now it’s a given: if we’re to help our ELLs and SELs access the rigorous demands of today’s content standards, we must cultivate the “code” that drives school success: academic language. Look no further for assistance than this much-anticipated series from Ivannia Soto, in which she invites field authorities Jeff Zwiers, David and Yvonne Freeman, Margarita Calderon, and Noma LeMoine to share every teacher’s need-to-know strategies on the four essential components of academic language.

The subject of this volume is grammar and syntax. Here, David and Yvonne Freeman shatter the myth that academic language is all about vocabulary, revealing how grammar and syntax inform our students’ grasp of challenging text. With this book as your roadmap, you’ll learn how to:

  • Teach grammar in the context of students’ speech and writing
  • Use strategies such as sentence frames, passives, combining simple sentences into more complex sentences, and nominalization to create more complex noun phrases
  • Assess academic language development through a four-step process

Look inside and discover the tools you need to help students master more sophisticated and complex grammatical and syntactical structures right away. Better yet, read all four volumes in the series and put in place a start-to-finish instructional plan for closing the achievement gap.


 
Acknowledgments
 
About the Authors
 
1. Introduction to the Book Series
 
2. Abbreviated Literature Review/ Research Base for Grammar and Syntax
 
3. Practical Application to the Classroom for Grammar and Syntax
 
4. Fostering Literacy With Grammar and Syntax
 
5. Assessing Grammar and Syntax
 
6. Conclusions, Challenges, and Connections
 
Epilogue: The Vision
 
References
 
Index
Key features

(1) An accessible guide to understanding and promoting Academic Language development (ALD) among both ELLs and speakers of non-standard English.

(2) Built around research-based principles for ALD instruction across all content areas.

(3) Focuses on the syntactical and grammatical aspects of Academic Language across the content areas.

(4) Includes a range of elementary and secondary connections such as student work samples and examples of student dialogue.

(7) Includes tools for conducting PD on this topic



Publishing Rationale

(1) The topic is more important than ever: results of the 2015 PARCC and Smarter-Balanced assessments show ever-widening gaps between ELLs and their non-ELL peers.  Academic Language Development is the key to unlocking academic content.

(2) The series as a whole features high-visibility co-authors.  Freeman and Freeman are best-selling authors of multiple Heinemann books.  They have conducted professional learning on helping emergent bilingual students for more than two decades and are popular keynote and conference presenters.  My hope is that, after enjoying a positive experience collaborating on this series, they will be open to increasing their level of involvement with Corwin.

(3) Each volume can be used individually or with other books in the series, depending upon the needs of readers.

(4) The series is an offshoot of the new Institute for Culturally- and Linguistically-Responsive Teaching (ICLRT) based at Whittier College.  The volumes will be promoted at an annual conference hosted by the Institute. Corwin sponsored this successful event in 2015 and we also signed a memorandum of understanding with ICLERT as a precursor to subsequent co-sponsored ventures.  We hope to include additional Corwin authors in the 2016 Institute and are exploring other partnership opportunities with the Center

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ISBN: 9781506337821

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