Language Acquisition

and Language UNIT 7: LANGUAGE ACROSS THE

Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years
CURRICULUM
Structure

7.0 Introduction
7.1 Objectives
7.2 Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) and Cognitive
Academic Language Proficiency (CALP)
7.3 The Importance of Reading in Content Areas
7.4 Teacher Support in Learning Specialized Vocabulary and Grammar
7.5 Writing in Content Subject Areas
7.6 Facilitating Student Learning in Content Areas
7.7 Classroom Techniques
7.8 Let Us Sum Up
7.9 Answers to Check Your Progress
7.10 Suggested Readings

7.0 INTRODUCTION
We have plenty of research evidence to show that in real life children do not
compartmentalise learning. In fact learning progresses from simpler, concrete,
general and more holistic forms initially, to more complex, abstract, specific and
fragmented learning at a later advanced stage. This has great relevance to the
development of reading and writing skills in the initial years of school. This
essentially means that language learning is not confined to the area of the
language class alone. Much of the language skills that develop at school are
within other subject areas. Although this is particularly true of the mother tongue,
it is also relevant to schools where there is a transition to the second language, in
this case English, as the medium of instruction. It is important to expose the
children to language tasks from various subject areas, right from the beginning so
that they are adequately prepared for later reading and writing tasks in school,
and in real life.

Before we specifically look at language across the curriculum let us take a

glimpse at the philosophy of integrating the curriculum through what may be
called 'holistic teaching'. Holistic teachers endeavour to place the children's
learning within the context of their own experiences. There is a fundamental
belief that when learning is meaningful, children learn. In fact in a
meaningful environment it is difficult to stop children from learning. Within the
constraints of the formal syllabus, teachers should try, as far as possible, not to
fragment learning or divide and subdivide it into artificial time periods or subject
areas. We must recognise the fact that boundaries between subject areas have
been artificially created, purely for convenience. There are overlaps and a flow
between subjects. In the child's mind there are no compartments. These are
artificially created. Whether the writing happens in a mathematics class or a
writing class, it draws upon the same writing competencies and skills.

Sometimes the difficulty in solving a problem sum in mathematics is due to

inadequate understanding of the language. It is essential for teachers to encourage
children to read, write, and speak in all areas of the curriculum. Teachers should
take advantage of an opportunity to teach a geography lesson during a reading
class, if the need arises, or the other way round. Such teachers are aware that
natural learning that continuously takes place in the real world is not fragmented.
40
Such teachers make efforts to integrate the children's learning across the various Language Across
subject areas, to the greatest extent possible. the Curriculum

Language naturally pervades all areas of learning. It is for us teachers to use

every opportunity that the curriculum offers, for developing language skills.

7.1 OBJECTIVES
After going through this unit, you should be able to:

 develop suitable reading and writing tasks across the curriculum for
beginners;
 make linkages in the timetable, so that there is optimal utilisation of the time
available; and
 integrate different areas of the curriculum.

7.2 BASIC INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION

SKILLS (BICS) AND COGNITIVE ACADEMIC
LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY (CALP)
A distinction has often been made between two sets of language skills – Basic
Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language
Proficiency (CALP). The abilities of interpretation, expression and negotiation
are essential for interpersonal communication. Cognitive Academic Language
Proficiency, on the other hand, is concerned more with the abilities of thinking
and learning effectively from the curriculum processes. There is no doubt that
both these sets of language skills need to be nurtured and developed. In reality,
however, it is only the Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills that receive
some attention in the language classrooms. The Cognitive Academic Language
Proficiency remains totally neglected in the content subject classrooms. Teacher
should also know that CALP involves some universal, cross-linguistic dimension
of competence that once acquired can be transferred to any language. This
suggests that if students are taught thinking and analysing skills in L1 (mother
tongue), these skills can be transferred to L2 (second language-English). Snow,
Met and Genesse (1992) suggest that ―traditional methods for teaching second
language often disassociate learning from cognitive or academic development.‖
Most of the time learners receive little or no help to make optimal use of their
limited second language repertoire in the content subject classrooms. They are
neither taught how to read reflectively in content areas nor are they encouraged to
pick up study skills for effective learning. Those who excel in content areas do so
largely because of their personal interest in the subject, aptitude and their own
achievement orientation. The less interested depend heavily on rote memory.
While most teachers concern themselves with presenting information in their
subject, very few help students acquire the thinking strategies they need to
actively construct meaning.

Content area literacy advocates are directing their attention toward "creating
educational environments in which students are challenged to analyse, reflect,
communicate and create. In such environments effective strategies for reading,
writing, speaking, listening and thinking are more likely to develop more
naturally and easily than when these are addressed as isolated elements." (Manzo
and Manzo, 1993)

The structuring of information in content areas subjects is thus not accidental and
this knowledge of text structure can be used by students to anticipate and predict 41
 Language Acquisition while reading and organizing information while writing. The very nature of text
and Language types in different content areas of the school curriculum demand reflective
Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years
reading skills. When reading reflectively the reader actually breaks the flow of
his or her progress through the text and reflects on something s/he has read about
or related to what s/he is reading about. But this does not happen unless the
reader knows when and where to stop and reflect. Knowing when and where to
break reading for reflection is facilitated by knowledge of text structure. And
when students read expository and instructional texts, they need the support and
guidance from teachers to be reflective, to benefit from their reading.

Check your progress 1

1 Why do we need to extend reading and writing activities to other areas of

the curriculum?
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2 What is the difference between BICS and CALP?
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7.3 THE IMPORTANCE OF READING IN

CONTENT AREAS
Although there are fairly graded sets of textbooks to teach English as a second
language, no special attention is paid to the graded use of English in content
subject textbooks. Hence, in a discussion on Propagation of sound from a science
textbook meant to be used in class VII, there are several lexical items of the
scientific register - rarefaction, compression, vibration or non-scientific items
like simultaneity.

Moreover, ordinary everyday words like work, energy, stress or salt assume
very special meanings in science lessons. Similarly, there are specialised lexis for
social sciences and mathematics which the students must understand. These
specialised lexis are embedded in extremely complicated sentence structures.

Students need a lot of help in transferring their reading skills acquired in the
language classrooms to the content subject areas. This is because a number of
English texts are narrative whereas science texts and many texts in the social
sciences are informative.

The writer's intention is usually to inform: to describe, explain and initiate

readers into ways of observing, thinking about and doing things. In subjects like
science or geography, a writer has very little choice about the facts he or she is
presenting and the teacher primarily wants students to grasp what is being
communicated.
42
Authors like Lunzer and Gardner (1984) suggest that there are certain ways in Language Across
which information is organized or structured in content area subjects. Each of the the Curriculum
text types has its own characteristic generic headings or information
constituents and we expect these constituents to go together. This ―going
together‖ of related information constituents contributes to coherence or sense of
a text. For example, a text that belongs to the topic type physical structure will
deal with these information constituents – parts, location of parts, properties of
parts and function of parts. This topic may be on the structure of a plant. All
these descriptions would deal with different parts of the object, what the part
looks like, what they are called, how they are made and where they are situated,
what the function and purpose of a particular part is and how it works.

Similarly, experiments and practical activities cannot be undertaken without

apparatus, material, procedures or steps, results and interpretation. Although the
apparatus and materials would vary from experiment to experiment as would the
results and interpretation – the information constituents or generic headings
would remain unchanged.

Check your progress 2

1 Why should teachers and students know how information is organized in

a text?
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2 The style of reading a thrilling story is often called receptive. Can you
guess why? Explain how the receptive reading of a narrative is different
from reading a unit on different methods of farming in geography.
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7.4 TEACHER SUPPORT IN LEARNING

SPECIALIZED VOCABULARY AND GRAMMAR
Snow, Met and Genesse (1992) suggest that the language teachers use in a
content classroom can be distinguished as two distinct categories – ‗content-
obligatory‘ and ‗content-compatible‘. Content-obligatory language is associated
with specific content objectives. For example, when studying the topic of
volcanoes in Geography, content obligatory language would include verbs such
as erupt, force, melt; nouns such as magma, core, lava or cohesive devices as
consequently, as a result and therefore. Similarly, in a discussion on the
revolution of Earth around the Sun specialized lexis such as axis, tilts, rotates,
orbits arc examples of content obligatory language.
43
 Language Acquisition Content Compatible language, on the other hand, focuses on recycling language
and Language learned previously. For example describing a process using ‗first, then, finally‘
Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years
and so on when teaching the lesson on volcanoes or language describing position
(e.g. tilted towards, away from, move to, etc.) when doing the lesson on the
revolution of earth around the sun are simple examples of content compatible
language teaching.

Check your progress 3

Look at the tasks given below; would you consider them content compatible?
Give a reason for your answer.

a Write appropriate adjectives to go with each of the following nouns:

hedgehog - …………………………………..
petals - …………………………………..
eagle - …………………………………..
oak - …………………………………..
bark - …………………………………..

b Here are different words referring to features of the environment. Arrange

them from small to large scale. One is done as an example.

stream, river, brook - brook, stream, river

mountain, hill, hillock - …………………………………..
bay, cave, gulf - …………………………………..
wood, copse, forest - …………………………………..
pond, puddle, lake - …………………………………..

7.5 WRITING IN CONTENT SUBJECT AREAS

Much of the writing that happens in the school is within other subject areas. It is
therefore important to expose the children to writing tasks from various subject
areas, right from the beginning so that they are adequately prepared for later
writing tasks in school and in real life.

Since the mid-nineteen seventies, researchers in the western world have

repeatedly pointed out a decline in the ability of students to write well. One
reason given is that the students are not asked to write enough. Also writing work
in other subject areas of the school curriculum is not often viewed as writing.
One does not look at the writing of a mathematics problem or the flow chart of a
geography lesson, or a report based on diagrammatic or tabular information as
‗writing‘. Yet students spend a very large amount of time doing such tasks. These
tasks require the ability to present ideas logically, to choose the appropriate style
and form accurately; sometimes they also tap the ability to transcode information
from a diagrammatic to the written form.

Writing research in recent years has highlighted the need to look at writing across
the curriculum. This is because a very large amount of writing that happens in
real life or in the later school years in the second language is to do with other
44
subject areas. It is important, therefore to extend the kind of writing tasks we Language Across
undertake to include activities from across the curriculum. the Curriculum

Writing in Science, Social studies or Environmental studies (EVS)

These subjects present endless opportunities for writing. Much of the learning
that takes place in the areas of learning at this early stage is directly related to the
children's experience: Children observe, collect, classify, experiment, and
enquire about a particular subject area from their immediate environment.
They need to then communicate their findings in suitable ways. They can further
extend their own understanding through suitably designed creative writing
experiences. Suitably planned work cards are one way of allowing children to do
their own, independent investigations and presentations based on these. These
could either be done as a part of subject teaching or as a part of project work. To
allow for individual interests the children could be given a set of work cards to
choose from. In a class of very young children, it is sometimes simpler to have all
the children working on the same thing, with some amount of individual
variation. Much of the investigative work that children do at the primary school
level is teacher selected. The best activities are 'hands on' experiences. In the
beginning these activities could begin by focusing on the child's skills of
observation. Picture books can serve as very good research vehicles. Some
samples of the kind of work cards that may be used are given below.

Flowers
Ask students to collect two different types of flowers and bring them to their
next class. Tell them to make the chart given below:

Observations Flower A Flower B

Colour
Shape
Width
Special characteristics
Where did you find it?

Ask students to look carefully at the flowers and complete the above chart. Then
use the information to write a paragraph that explains how these flowers are alike
and how they are different.

Insects
1 Find out how many legs an insect has.
2 How is an insect different from a bird?
3 How is it the same?
4 Draw a beautiful insect you saw. It could be in a book. Imagine that this
insect became your friend. Write a paragraph about what you did
together.

Jungles
1 Name three jungle animals
2 Why are jungles so thick with plants and trees?
3 Write the names of any real jungles.
4 Write the name of a jungle story you have heard.
5 Imagine you went to a jungle. Write a story describing your
experiences. 45
 Language Acquisition A Mammal
and Language 1 Who do you think is the cleverest mammal in the world? Draw a picture
Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years
of this mammal.
2 Write a riddle about this mammal and see if your friends can guess it.

My Five Senses
1 Name the five senses that you have.
2 Does everyone have five senses? What about animals like dogs, cats,
cows, and goats?
3 If someone gave you a wish that you could have another sense what
would you like? Write a funny story about what you would do with your
sixth sense.

Kangaroos
1 Where do kangaroos live?
2 Why do you think a mama kangaroo has a pocket and a mama rabbit
does not?
3 Supposing your mama had a pocket for you to sit in, write about one
day that you spent in the pocket of your mama.

My Family
1 Make a list of the people in your family.
2 Find out who has the biggest family in your class.
3 Do animals have families?
4 Write about some things you like about your family.

In the above work cards we have integrated writing activities with other subject
areas. The writing can be imaginative, creative or factual. When children are
given open-ended activities it is important that the teacher should guide them
about where they will get the information. Work cards can also be based on the
children's immediate environment. Some examples are given below:

Houses
i How many houses are there on the street where you live?
ii Look at the houses on your way to school. What colour do you see the
most? Can you think of any reason?
iii What building material is most used in the houses on your street?
iv Think of any two animals that live near your house, what kind of houses
do they have? Draw or describe.
v If you were free to make any kind of house, what would it be like?
Describe it in detail.

Balls
i Name six different kinds of balls.
ii Look at the balls used on your school playground. Which type of ball is
used the most?
iii Think of a new ball game. Write down the rules, and ask your friends to
play it.

Hair
i How many girls in your class have long hair?
ii Circle the names of animals that have fur.
Snake, cow, rabbit, turtle, bear, fish,
fox, lizard, duck, horse, chicken, dog
iii Write a story about what happened when your friend drank a medicine
which made him grow long hair all over his body.
46
In the above examples, creative writing tasks have been integrated with other Language Across
subjects. It is very useful to have a set of work cards prepared on the basis of the the Curriculum
different topics the children cover in their different subjects. These can be given
to the children whenever the occasion arises. Doing their own investigations
helps children to internalise as well as understand abstract concepts and develop
a range of learning skills. These work cards not only help to integrate the learning
from various subject areas, but they also provide opportunities for first hand
experience. The writing tasks that follow draw upon this first hand experience.
The children are also able to explore different ways of sharing and presenting
their findings with others.

It is up to teachers to prepare their own work cards. Keep the interests and age
level of the children in mind. Prepare work cards with materials that can be used
over and over again. These could also be given as group activities. If you like,
different groups can work on related work cards at the same time, and then there
can be a common sharing.

Check your progress 4

Try out three of the activities given above. Write a report on the outcomes.
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Writing in Mathematics
Ask children to write stories about themselves using numbers. For example:

a) Go shopping: Ask the children to draw a picture of the things they would
buy if they had fifty rupees. Then ask them to imagine that they had really
gone on a shopping trip, and to write a story about the shopping trip. This
is a good activity for reinforcing order words like - first, next, then,
finally. As a follow up activity let some children make a list of the things
that they bought on the board. Let the other children respond by saying
how realistic the lists were. Let the children get an idea of which items
could be bought with fifty rupees and which could not.

b) Tell about time: Draw four pictures of clocks on the blackboard, showing
four different times of the day. Let the children read the times and then
write a story about what they do at these times. It could be called ‗What I
did yesterday‘, or ‗How I will spend my day‘. Give some vocabulary
47
 Language Acquisition words if required. An extension of this activity is to give the children an
and Language idea of one minute, by keeping quiet while the watch hands move
Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years
through one minute. Once the children have an idea of a minute let them
write about the things they can do in one minute, followed by the things
they cannot do in one minute.

Some other ideas: Ask the children to write a story based on a day when
all the clocks stopped or when every clock had a different time. Try and
tap real stories of what happened when a clock stopped or when someone
got the time wrong.

c) Writing about favourite numbers: Ask the children to write all that they
know about their favourite number. For example, number six is like nine
upside down. It is the same as three pairs or half a dozen. It is one less
than the days of the week. It is how old I am. It is the time the birds wake
up in the morning, and so on. Such writing helps children to connect their
learning to real life experiences.

d) Measuring or distances: Once the children have studied about these get
them to write about things like:

How would you measure the length of your room, if you didn't have
anything to measure it with? Let them actually do it, and then write about
it.

Let the children give rough estimations of about how far some places are
from school. The list should have places within and around the school.
Using the distances let the children write a paragraph on "the area around
my school". Let them use words like - near, further, closer, far away.

f) Calendar: Ask each child to find her birthday on a calendar. Look for the
day of the week it falls on. How many more such days are there in the
month? What will the child be doing on the week before, and in the week
after her birthday? Write a poem or story based on these. Develop other
writing activities to reinforce other math‘s concepts, and link them to the
children's lives.

Check your progress 5

Write about any other activities that can help students to learn mathematical
concepts better.
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48 …………………………………………………………………………...............
 ………………………………………………………………………….............. Language Across
the Curriculum
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7.6 FACILITATING STUDENT LEARNING IN

CONTENT AREAS
The importance of learning through interaction using group work and pair work
has been proved in communicative classrooms. Research shows that
collaborative learning methods can improve the effectiveness of student learning
in content – integrated classrooms. In small groups and pairs students are
encouraged to make active use of language for genuine communicative purposes
involving a variety of discourse types without the teacher‘s constant intervention
and control.

‗Context-embedded‘ teacher talk, questioning and typical classroom exchanges

also play a significant role in student learning. Teacher can link new learning to
background knowledge and provide ‗Scaffolding‘ by speaking more slowly,
emphasizing key words and phrases, using simple vocabulary or grammar,
building in redundancy through repeating, restating, paraphrasing the use of
synonyms, antonyms, defining through exemplification, body language and so
on. The teachers must decide how far s/he should simplify the language without
oversimplifying the concepts or content. The required language may be pre-
taught, elicited from more linguistically competent students or provided as the
need arises. Visual support such as realia, videos, along with key visuals, tables
or diagrams help to make the structure of the text explicit. In developing reading
and speaking skills, tasks might include sequencing, predicting, information
transfer and various types of information gap activities; written outputs might be
supported by such speaking and reading activities. Such tasks not only provide
opportunities for cooperative learning but also help the learning of both content
and language.

7.7 CLASSROOM TECHNIQUES

Chryshochoos (2002) has some important suggestion for classroom techniques

when following a cross- curricular approach to teaching-learning.
Methodologically the choice of the topics should be consistent with the students‘
interests and needs. Often, the teacher in collaboration with the students chooses
the subject. They then brainstorm and give inputs on whatever they know on the
topic, perhaps as a whole class activity. They get into groups to gather facts on
different aspects of the topic. For example, one group would study the economic
policy of the Mughuls, while another would research on art and music in the
Mughul period. Along with gathering ideas, the students‘ view, stances, values
and attitudes should also be encouraged. Collaborative teaching in teams is
suggested. The teacher‘s role is to lead the students‘ exploratory procedures and
develop their communicative strategies in socially authentic situations. They
cultivate life skills, attitudes and values which would contribute positively to the
students‘ socialization.

Here is a diagram from Chryshochoos et al (2002) which succinctly expresses the

cross-cultural approach to teaching.

49
 Language Acquisition
and Language
Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years

7.8 LET US SUM UP

In real life children do not compartmentalise learning. In fact learning progresses
from simpler, concrete, general and more holistic forms initially, to more
complex, abstract, specific and fragmented learning at later advanced stage.
Boundaries between subject areas have been artificially created purely for
convenience. But the reading and writing skills that are available with the
learners may not be adequate to do the required tasks in science, mathematics or
social science classroom. As language pervades all areas of learning, it is
essential for teachers to encourage language skills like reading, writing and
speaking in all areas of the curriculum.

When reading for learning, the actual processes can be thought of as comprising
five phases: decoding, making sense of what is said, comparing this with what
one knows already, making judgement about the material and finally revising
one‘s ideas. But all too often the process stops at the second phase: the reader
does impose a kind of local sense on the phrases and sentences as they occur, but
does not trouble to establish their overall sense. The reader thus does not read
reflectively and is not always able to use reading for learning.

Reading for learning can be improved by making students conscious of those

features of logical arrangement that are common to all well written passages. The
notion of information structure emphasizes the recognition of information
constituents which keep recurring and help students deal with different text-
types.

Language teachers, who are aware of the language demands of other subjects,
take care of ‗content-obligatory‘ and ‗content-compatible‘ words.

A variety of writing tasks across the curriculum help learners to become better
writers.

Small group work to exchange ideas or to bring out some very pertinent points is
as important a tool of learning as teacher-led discussions.

Teachers, across different subject areas of the curriculum, need to collaborate to

integrate content and language teaching.
50
 Language Across
7.9 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS the Curriculum

Check your progress 1

1 When children learn naturally they do not compartmentalise learning into

subject areas. Taking reading and writing tasks across the curriculum
helps to reinforce and support the natural ways of learning. It helps to
integrate learning from the various subject areas. Often the difficulty that
a child has with a math problem or with a science concept is one of
language. By extending reading and writing tasks into these subjects we
help children to further their understanding of the subject matter being
studied. Reading and writing across different subjects also enables
teachers to give their students more practice in both the skills.

2 BICS refer to the abilities of interpretation, expression and negotiation

which are essential for interpersonal communication. CALP refers to the
abilities of thinking and learning effectively from the curricular processes.

Check your progress 2

1 Knowledge of structure helps in anticipating and predicting the

information constituents. The presence of related information constituents
contributes to the coherence of a text. Knowledge of information structure
helps in note making and summarizing. It also provides support for
writing different kinds of text.

2 The style of reading a narrative is often called receptive. The story carries
the reader along and stimulates the right questions without any conscious
effort. Indeed when one is reading a gripping story for pleasure,
understanding does come without effort.

Reading a unit on geography, however, would require frequent pauses

while reading and would require the students to pick out the main idea,
pick out the details, draw conclusions, compare and contrast, group and
classify and interpret tables, diagrams, etc. It would also mean that the
reader follows the specialized lexis used in the text besides grasping the
organisation of the content.

Check your progress 3

Both the tasks on vocabulary are content compatible, as they would enhance the
linguistic competence of the learner. Whereas the first task would help in
graphic/vivid descriptions of objects, the second task would clarify concepts
about shapes and sizes.

Check your progress 4

Do it yourself.
Check your progress 5
Do it yourself.

7.10 SUGGESTED READINGS

Chryshochoos, J. E. [Link] 2002. The Methodology of Teaching of English as
Foreign Language with Reference to the Cross-curricular Approach and Task-
based Learning, The Pedagogical Institute, Greece.
51
 Language Acquisition IGNOU, MESE-005 block 2 and CTE-04 (4b)
and Language
Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years
Lunzer, E and Gardner K. 1984. Learning from the Written Word, Oliver and
Boyd. U.K.

Manzo, V. and Manzo, C. 1995, Teaching Children to be Literate, A Reflective

Approach, Harcourt Brace College Publishers.

Snow, M. A., Met, M. and Genesee, F. (1992), ―A Conceptual Framework for the
Integration of Language and Content Instruction.‖ In P. Richard – Amato and M.
A. Snow (Eds.), The multicultural Classroom: Readings for content-area
teachers. White Plains, NY: Longman, pp. 27-38.

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