LLED 360

I thought that Chapter 4, “Content-Area Variations of Academic Language” was a good way to get us thinking about the differences in language use across disciplines. Also, thinking about the use of language in our own disciplines is important, as so many of the terms or phrases we may use do not seem complicated or confusing to us since we are so accustomed to hearing and using them ourselves.  The idea of “expert blind spots” was a good reminder of how we need to be aware of our use of language in the classroom, especially when considering our ELLs.  We need to remember that ELL students are facing language challenges in all of their classes, not just ours, which means they are trying to make sense of and learn a variety of types of language that may not always cross disciplines. As a social studies teacher, I enjoyed reading the section on history and it really made me think about the range of opportunity within the social studies discipline for students to learn and use academic language.  For example, a major focus of history is analyzing and interpreting a variety of sources to put together the full picture of a historical event, a process that will give students the opportunity to think critically and find new meanings in academic language.