Week 2 Flashcards
What is the academic register
vocab, syntax and discourse associated with classroom talk, textbooks, tests and other curricular materials
specific linguistic features associated with academic disciplines (content areas) - needed to understand domain specific information
What are the types of lexical complexity?
lexical density
lexical diversity
Lexical density
Number of content words (per clause)
Nouns (content words) express concepts
Lexical diversity
Amount of novel lexical content
Measured by the ratio of word tokens to word type (how many nouns, how many adjectives, etc)
Lexical breadth
Amount of stored familiar meanings
Everyday oral language
Vernacular varieties that are more oral
Describes primary language abilities
Typical face-to-face conversation
Insufficient for academic achievements (when alone)
Ex. Chatting, email friends, personal journal
Academic language
Specialized varieties that are more literate
Describes secondary language abilities and advances literacy-related language abilities
Typical of the language of schooling, including the language of textbooks and composition
Necessary of academic achievement
Ex. Oral PPT presentation, Interpreting results for parent/spouse
Syntactic complexity
Length - number of words per syntactic unit (phrase, clause, etc.)
Depth - number of embedded clauses in a unit (clause)
Diversity - different types of syntactic units clustered together
Dimensions of academic language
Semantic dimension - general and specialized vocabulary
Syntactic dimension - sentences, clauses, phrases
Discourse dimension - the purpose of the writing (awareness of the audience, inferential capabilities)
What are the levels of general and specialized meanings
Foundation - oral language register
Broad - General academic knowledge for knowing, thinking, reading and writing
Specialized - language of different subjects
