Core Academic Language Skills Research Articles

Core academic language skills as a predictor of academic success in Grade 6 South African learners

With this article I explore the relationship between core academic language skills (CALS) – a construct representing a set of high-utility language skills needed to manage the linguistic features prevalent in academic texts across content areas – and schooling outcomes. There has long been an understanding that there is a distinction between academic language and colloquial language, originally described by Jim Cummins (1976) as cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) and basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS). The construct has only recently been operationalised (Uccelli, Phillips Galloway, Barr, Meneses & Dobbs, 2015) as the individual skills and competencies that underlie CALP. The CALS construct describes an empirically testable set of competencies that address this need. This has been used in the development of an assessment instrument aimed at South African learners – the CALS-I-ZA (MacFarlane, Barr & Uccelli, 2022) – and I investigate whether a measurable link exists between this assessment and schooling outcomes for a sample of Grade 6 learners in 2 public schools in the Gauteng province of South Africa. Schooling outcomes have been measured using the Gauteng Provincial Common Assessments – a provincial examination intended to measure schooling outcomes on a comparable assessment instrument. The study reported on here shows a moderately strong correlation between the CALS I ZA and the provincial common examinations (r = 0.64 and r = 0.65). This predictive relationship between CALS and schooling outcomes leads to an argument for direct instruction in CALS as an embedded feature of pedagogy in South Africa.

Toward Biliteracy: Unpacking the Contribution of Mid‐adolescent Dual Language Learners’ Spanish and English Academic Language Skills to English Reading Comprehension

Academic language skills support mid‐adolescents’ comprehension of the language of school texts. To date, scarce research has explored associations between dual academic language skills and reading comprehension among mid‐adolescent dual language immersion (DLI) students. This study examined individual differences in Spanish and English academic language skills and their contribution to English reading comprehension in a cross‐sectional sample of DLI students in Grades 4–6 (N = 101). Taking advantage of a recently proposed construct, the core academic language skills (CALS), and the CALS instruments available in Spanish and English, dual academic language skills were examined as predictors of English reading comprehension. Results revealed that Spanish and English CALS were both significant predictors of English reading comprehension even after accounting for students’ sociodemographic background, English proficiency designation, and English word reading fluency. Findings underscore the cross‐linguistic contribution of Spanish academic language skills to English reading comprehension and highlight the importance of promoting these skills in both languages to support mid‐adolescent DLI students’ biliteracy development.

Core Academic Language Skills: validating a construct in linguistically dissimilar settings

ABSTRACT Recently a novel instrument – the Core Academic Language Instrument (CALS-I) – aimed at testing a constellation of school-relevant English language skills was developed and validated for use in the United States (Uccelli, Barr, Dobbs, Galloway, Meneses and Sánchez, 2015. Core Academic Language Skills: An expanded operational construct and a novel instrument to chart school-relevant language proficiency in preadolescent and adolescent learners. Applied Psycholinguistics 36: 1077–1109). The unitary construct tested by the CALS-I was dubbed Core Academic Language Skills (CALS) and it aimed to identify and describe a set of skills that comprise academic language proficiency of high utility across curricular content areas. This study piloted a version of the CALS-I that was slightly modified for use in South Africa targeting specifically middle-school learners. The results of this study reveal that the CALS construct functions almost identically to the United States sample when tested in South Africa, and this provides strong evidence for the fundamental and cross-cutting nature of these pedagogically relevant skills.

Exploring the Cross-Linguistic Contribution of Spanish and English Academic Language Skills to English Text Comprehension for Middle-Grade Dual Language Learners

In this study, we examine the unique and shared contributions of Spanish and English core academic language skills (CALS) to English reading comprehension in a population of Spanish-English dual language learners in Grades 4 and 5 (n = 165). We focus on cross-disciplinary CALS, operationalized as sets of high-utility lexical, syntactic and discourse resources prevalent in school texts. This study finds that Spanish and English CALS are positively and significantly related, and, further, that both sets of skills exert a unique positive influence on English reading comprehension. Aligned with an interpretation of linguistic interdependence between Spanish and English academic language skills, results document their cross-linguistic contribution to reading comprehension for students enrolled in educational programs that foster literacy and content learning regularly in two languages.

Amplifying and affirming students’ voices through CALS-informed instruction

ABSTRACTRecent literacy research calls for pedagogical approaches that multiply students’ opportunities to discuss texts and ideas that matter. We argue that understanding mid-adolescents’ language needs can further inform discussion-based approaches. Our assessment research reveals that substantial differences in Core Academic Language Skills (CALS) – high-utility school-relevant language skills – help explain why comprehending school texts can be challenging for many adolescents. Our research with Latinx dual language learners’ and their teachers documents how leveraging heritage languages and identities contributes to academic success. Integrating insights from our teacher-researcher collaborations, we call for practices and dispositions that amplify language resources and awareness and affirm students’ voices by engaging teachers and students in reflecting about language, context, and power while scaffolding CALS across content areas and grades. Affirming while amplifying students’ voices entails expanding students’ and teachers’ critical rhetorical flexibility, the ability to use language critically and flexibly for particular contexts and purposes.

Specifying the Academic Language Skills That Support Text Understanding in the Middle Grades: The Design and Validation of the Core Academic Language Skills Construct and Instrument

AbstractThis study reports on the conceptualization of a new construct targeting the cross‐disciplinary academic language skills most relevant to school reading comprehension, targeting the validation of the Core Academic Language Skills (CALS) Instrument, a novel assessment tool which measures this construct. Participants included Grade 4–8 monolingual English and bilingual students designated as English learners (N = 7,152) from the United States. The study investigated the dimensionality of the core academic language skills construct, the reliability and validity of the CALS Instrument, and the impact of school grade on students’ performance in core academic language skills. Results revealed the assessment measure to be unidimensional and to discriminate performance by grade level. This study offers insight into the value of measuring cross‐disciplinary school‐relevant language proficiency, delineates skills to be targeted through instruction to support reading comprehension, and offers a tool to identify students who will benefit most from this instruction.

The role of cross-disciplinary academic language skills in disciplinary, source-based writing: investigating the role of core academic language skills in science summarization for middle grade writers

Learning to use language in order to complete source-based writing tasks is a challenge for middle grade writers worthy of additional study, especially given that these tasks are increasingly common in classrooms. Here, we examined the contribution of receptive and productive cross-disciplinary academic language skills to the writing quality of middle graders’ science summaries, after accounting for students’ sociodemographic characteristics, their comprehension of the science source text, and general summary features (i.e., length and copy ratio). Our results suggest that the ability to produce a high-quality science summary is predominately driven by the writers’ receptive academic language proficiency, comprehension of the source text and productive academic language used when writing, including text length. We contend that these results are illuminating because of the joint examination of students’ productive and receptive academic language skills. In addition, this study attempts to unpack the relation between summary length and quality, identifying levels of receptive academic language skills as an important moderator. These findings have the potential to advance the current understanding of malleable factors associated with science writing proficiency, as well as with those associated with source-based writing more generally.

Examining developmental relations between core academic language skills and reading comprehension for English learners and their peers.

Although many adolescents struggle to comprehend text, the school-relevant language skills, which might contribute to variation in reading comprehension ability during this developmental period, remain understudied. To expand the research base, this study examines the concurrent development of academic language skills and reading comprehension in a sample of emergent bilinguals (EBs) and their English proficient (EP) peers (n = 573) followed over two academic years, from Grade six to seven. Parallel process latent growth modeling results reveal that academic language and reading comprehension skills develop concurrently, with growth rates in Core Academic Language Skills (CALS) positively associated with growth rates in reading comprehension. Furthermore, initial levels of CALS predicted rates of growth in reading comprehension. We also find that EBs, who are by definition in the process of acquiring English, begin Grade six with CALS that are far below their peers, but develop these skills at similar rates as their EP classmates. Results reveal the potential for CALS-focused instruction for improving adolescent learners’ reading comprehension development, and highlight the particular relevance of supporting CALS for EBs, who are tasked with acquiring the language of print at the same time as they are acquiring other registers of English. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)

Aspects of academic language proficiency of intermediate phase teacher education students

Background: In the intermediate phase of schooling, learners’ academic success is largely dependent on their ability to read and write academic texts. Teachers need to teach academic language intentionally and explicitly. In order for teachers to do this, they themselves need knowledge of academic language and its features. Teacher education students, therefore need to be explicitly taught about academic language and provided with sufficient opportunities to develop their own proficiency. Aim: This article aimed to explore the academic language proficiency of a cross-sectional sample of teacher education students at a Johannesburg university. Setting: This study took place at a South African university that implements a university-accredited primary school teacher education qualification. The university is located in an urban area, but attracts students from both urban and rural contexts. Methods: Students’ test scores on a core academic language skills instrument were utilised as data for this study, with descriptive and inferential statistical analyses procedures used to make sense thereof. Results: Findings from a cross-sectional analysis between first- and second-year students’ scores indicated that students’ academic language proficiency does not appear to improve after their initial year of study. Conclusion: The article concludes with a discussion of the implication hereof for teacher education and for the profession.

Beyond reading comprehension: exploring the additional contribution of Core Academic Language Skills to early adolescents’ written summaries

To assess text comprehension and concept mastery, standards-aligned measures have moved from using multiple-choice questions to using source-based writing tasks (sometimes referred to as Reading-to-Write tasks). For example, it is now common for students to be asked to read a text and then to produce a written response, often a summary or argumentative essay. While this task involves comprehension of the source text, it remains unclear the degree to which these reading-to-write tasks also tap additional skills, such as academic language proficiency, which may support or hamper the writer’s ability to convey information acquired from reading. Given the lack of research focused on this question, in this study, we examined whether variability in early adolescents’ Core Academic Language Skills (CALS) contributes to the quality of their written summaries of science source texts. A total of 259 participants in grades four to eight were administered the Core Academic Language Skills Instrument (CALS-I) and the Global Integrated Scenario-Based Assessment (GISA), which included a reading comprehension test and a summary writing task, both based on the same scientific source text. Findings revealed that CALS, previously shown to be associated with reading comprehension, have a robust positive relation with early adolescents’ science summary writing quality, predicting unique variance over and above students’ source text comprehension and demographic characteristics. Results highlight the relevance of paying instructional attention not only to content but also to language skills when preparing students to become independent learners in a content area. In addition, these findings offer some evidence for CALS as a cross-modality construct relevant to both reading and writing at school.

From the Editors

Dear Colleagues, In this issue, the authors explore some fascinating topics in literacy, ranging from an innovative professional development program for teachers to an examination of the challenges in writing performance. Each of these studies examined topics relevant to researchers and practitioners and engaged in rigorous analysis of both quantitative and qualitative research. In the first article, Amendum, Bratsch-Hines, and Vernon-Feagans examine the efficacy of a professional development and early reading intervention program delivered through webcam technology. Conceivably, if such a technology is effective, it could provide a scalable and affordable strategy for professional development. Classrooms were randomly assigned to treatment and control conditions, with treatment teachers receiving one-to-one sessions of professional development for approximately 15 minutes per day. Results of the study show some promising findings: Classrooms with a high number of English learners significantly outperformed their peers in the control classrooms on word-level measures with substantial effect sizes. This study provides some important implications for future professional development to consider. The second article addresses the important issue of discussion, knowing that language-rich classrooms are essential for children's development. Boardman, Boelé, and Klingner used a multistrategy reading approach described as Collaborative Strategic Reading, in which students learn to apply discussion strategies in small, collaborative groups. The researchers used discourse analysis to compare the differences in teacher–student talk in business-as-usual conditions compared with the more collaborative model. Overall, the intervention was more effective, supporting a more dialogic model of discussion in which students appeared to take ownership of the discussion instead of the teacher. These results suggest an interesting and important strategy for promoting greater interaction in classroom discussions. Cho, Woodward, and Li turn to the important issues of how the beliefs that adolescent readers hold about knowledge and knowing are activated in the online reading context. The research centered on the patterns of readers’ epistemic processes. Observing how high school students performed on a critical online reading task, the researchers examined 10 more successful readers compared with 10 less successful readers. The results indicated that the more successful online readers tended to engage in higher order epistemic processing, whereas the less successful readers tended to function at a more surface level. The researchers found that epistemic processes tended to operate interactively, suggesting some important implications for research and practice. The topic of academic language has taken center stage in recent years, largely as a result of the Common Core State Standards. Meneses and her colleagues examined this important topic for monolingual Spanish-speaking adolescent readers in Chile. Despite great improvements throughout the country, adolescents still struggle with reading comprehension. In English, core academic-language skills (CALS) have been found to significantly contribute to reading comprehension. Consequently, the researchers developed two psychometrically reliable tests, the Spanish CALS instrument and the Spanish Academic Vocabulary Test to explore the dimensionality of core academic-language proficiencies and to examine the contribution of core academic language to reading comprehension. The research showed that the aggregated scores predicted reading comprehension. It also provided additional evidence that academic language is a critical skill in developing reading comprehension, supporting the need for interventions in academic language for Spanish-speaking adolescents. The last article in this issue addresses the cognitive and motivational challenges in writing. This research is particularly timely, given the fact that elementary students often lack the essential writing skills to be successful in school. De Smedt and colleagues examined how cognitive and motivational challenges mediate and correlate with students’ writing performance and how these relations might vary according to gender. Engaging a large sample of fifth- and sixth-grade students, the researchers examined writing self-efficacy, motivation, and strategies. The research suggested an important interplay between motivational and cognitive challenges related to students’ writing performance. Consequently, it highlights the importance of motivation and the need to study writing models for different groups of students. We hope that you will find this issue enlightening, as Reading Research Quarterly continues to highlight both rigorous qualitative and quantitative research that is at the cutting edge in our field. Susan B. Neuman Linda B. Gambrell

Academic language and the quality of written arguments and explanations of Chilean 8th graders

Writing is a task that entails high cognitive and linguistic efforts, especially when producing academic texts. Academic language might be one of the factors influencing the quality of written texts, given that prior research has shown its impact on reading comprehension. The purpose of this study is to examine the contribution of Spanish Core Academic Language Skills (S-CALS) and academic vocabulary to the quality of written argumentation and explanation. For this study, 126 Chilean 8th grade students produced an argumentative text and an explanatory text about the same topic. In addition, their academic vocabulary was assessed with the S-AVoc-T test and their CALS with the S-CALS-I test. Results show that both CALS and academic vocabulary are significantly and positively correlated with both writing tasks. Even though these instruments make different contributions to the predictive models in each discursive genre, a Principal Component Analysis revealed that the model that best explains writing quality are those which combine both language variables, namely Spanish Core Academic Language and Vocabulary Skills (S-CALVS). In argumentation, the S-CALVS model explains 29% of the variance, after controlling by gender. In contrast, in explanation, S-CALVS explains 35% of the variance. It is concluded that it is relevant to develop situated writing in each discursive genre and, upon that basis, to work with both CALS and academic vocabulary, because they have a specific impact on academic texts writing.

Academic Language as a Predictor of Reading Comprehension in Monolingual Spanish‐Speaking Readers: Evidence From Chilean Early Adolescents

AbstractAlthough literacy achievement has improved in Chile, adolescents’ underperformance in reading comprehension is still a serious concern. In English, core academic‐language skills (CALS) have been found to significantly predict reading comprehension, even controlling for academic vocabulary knowledge. CALS are high‐utility language skills that support reading comprehension across school content areas. Guided by an operational definition of Spanish CALS (S‐CALS), three goals drove this study: to develop two psychometrically reliable tests, the S‐CALS Instrument and the Spanish Academic Vocabulary (S‐AVoc) Test; to explore the dimensionality of core academic‐language proficiencies, as measured by these two tests; and to examine the contribution of core academic‐language proficiencies to reading comprehension. A cross‐sectional sample of 810 Chilean students (grades 4–8) participated in four assessments that measured standardized reading comprehension, word‐reading fluency, Spanish academic vocabulary, and S‐CALS. Using classical test theory and item response theory analyses, results yielded robust reliability evidence for both instruments. Consistent with prior research, S‐CALS and academic vocabulary scores displayed upward trends in higher grades yet considerable within‐grade variability. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that S‐CALS and S‐AVoc were best conceptualized as part of a higher order construct, the Spanish core academic‐language and vocabulary skills (S‐CALVS). The aggregated S‐CALVS scores predicted reading comprehension, beyond the contribution of grade, school factors, and word‐reading fluency. This study advances our scientific understanding of CALS as relevant for adolescent literacy beyond the English language. The high‐utility school‐relevant language and vocabulary skills offer promising tools to inform and evaluate innovative reading comprehension interventions for Spanish‐speaking adolescents.

Academic Language Across Content Areas: Lessons From an Innovative Assessment and From Students’ Reflections About Language

AbstractEducators are aware of the need to promote students’ academic language to support text comprehension. Yet, besides teaching academic vocabulary, many educators continue to ask, What would this instruction entail? Guided by a new framework known as core academic language skills (CALS), the authors’ research focuses on delineating core language skills that contribute to reading comprehension to make them more visible to educators and researchers. In this article, findings from two studies are integrated to argue for a mixed‐methods approach to advance academic language research and pedagogy. In study 1, the authors assessed upper elementary/middle school students’ CALS and quantitatively examined the association between CALS and reading comprehension. In study 2, the authors used qualitative methods to collect and analyze students’ oral reflections about academic language. Key findings from these studies and their implications for academic language pedagogy in today's schools are discussed.

From the Editors

Dear Colleagues, The transition of the International Reading Association to the International Literacy Association has been the result of an evolution of ideas and understandings about how we define the field. For some, the adoption of literacy in the association's name was merely the formalization of a de facto identity already held by many. Reading has not been replaced, but rather subsumed by a broader and more comprehensive descriptor, one that better captures the nature of the research happening in the field in the 21st century. With reverence to the past, we have ventured into our next era, meshing old with new and borrowing from knowledge generated from a variety of disciplines. The five peer-reviewed articles featured in this issue of Reading Research Quarterly could be viewed similarly, presenting cutting-edge research that builds on the past, examines new approaches, and has implications for practice and additional research that might transfer across populations. McGee and her colleagues bridge old and new in their investigation of young children's actions and strategic use of sources of information at a point of difficulty in reading. In the study, students’ actions at point of difficulty for Reading Recovery students reading at grade level at the end of the year are compared with those of Reading Recovery students who were not yet on grade level. The researchers found that all readers increased their use of graphic information, using it both alone and in conjunction with contextual information, and decreased their use of contextual information alone. More importantly, the researchers identified two new categories of error episodes: single action and action chain. Students who were at grade level in reading at the end of the year increased their use of action chains, whereas students below grade level did not. Tighe and Schatschneider make a new and considerable contribution to the research on morphological awareness and the interplay between morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge. Their investigation is particularly compelling because it ventures into new territory on several fronts. Never before has the factor structure of morphological awareness in Adult Basic Education (ABE) students been explored, nor have ABE students ever been the subjects of research differentiating morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge. Results from the study, generated through confirmatory factor analyses, support a multidimensional view of morphological awareness and provide the basis for a preliminary framework for understanding the construct and its interaction with vocabulary knowledge. Do emergent bilingual children borrow syntactic skills from their native language to understand a new one? In a fascinating study of Chinese–English learners in grades 1–3, Siu and Ho consider the import and impact of syntactic skills in three applications. A rigorous research design and analysis of the data yielded significant findings related to syntactical knowledge, many of which have cross-cultural implications for literacy instruction. In one particularly interesting component of the study, Siu and Ho examine cross-language transfer to determine whether syntactic knowledge in one language supports comprehension in another—putting to the test Cummins's hypothesis asserting that underlying abilities in literacy transfer across languages. Academic vocabulary has long been an area of interest for literacy researchers. Ucceli and her colleagues move the research in a new direction, beyond this single content-specific concept, to consider the impact of the more comprehensive construct of academic language. Conceptualized as CALS (core academic-language skills), this new expanded construct encompasses a battery of connected skills thought to support reading comprehension across content areas. Children in grades 4–6 were given the CALS-I, a robust and innovative instrument. Researchers looked for variability in students’ CALS-I scores by grade, socioeconomic status, and English proficiency. Scores on assessments of academic vocabulary and word-reading fluency, along with social and demographic factors, served as covariates. This research yielded significant results relevant to the field and future studies, including the finding that CALS are independent predictors of reading comprehension even when controlling for academic vocabulary, fluency, and sociodemographic factors. “So, you can write me a beautiful two-page paper, but I'm only grading the first 26 lines,” said a teacher attempting to teach her students to adhere to the 26-line maximum that they would encounter in their state's new mandated assessment. Comments such as these are considered in Davis and Willson's insightful and thought-provoking case study examining test-centric literacy practices during a testing transition in the State of Texas. Davis and Willson provide observations and commentary from the teachers, who have been “conscripted into participation in a complex data economy.” Scrupulous coding procedures and practices led the authors to suggest that transfer avoidance, managerial partitioning, and overreaching inferences are largely responsible for the persistence of test-centric practices. Smith, A.B., & Jones, X.Y. (2015). Article title. Journal Name. Advance online publication. doi:123456789 Linda B. Gambrell Susan B. Neuman

Beyond Vocabulary: Exploring Cross-Disciplinary Academic-Language Proficiency and Its Association With Reading Comprehension

Despite a longstanding awareness of academic language as a pedagogically relevant research area, the construct of academic language proficiency, understood as a more comprehensive set of skills than just academic vocabulary, has remained vaguely specified. In this study, we explore a more inclusive operationalization of an academic language proficiency construct, Core Academic Language Skills (CALS). CALS refers to a constellation of high-utility language skills hypothesized to support reading comprehension across school content areas. Using the CALS-I, a theoretically grounded and psychometrically robust innovative instrument, we first examined the variability in students' CALS by grade, English proficiency designation, and socioeconomic status (SES). Then, we examined the contribution of CALS to reading comprehension using academic vocabulary knowledge, word reading fluency, and socio- demographic factors as covariates. A linguistically and socioeconomically diverse cross- sectional sample of 218 students (grades 4-6) participated in four assessments: the CALS-I, a standardized reading comprehension assessment (GMRT), an academic vocabulary test (VAT), and a word reading fluency test (TOSWRF). GLM analysis of variance revealed that CALS differed significantly by grade, English proficiency designation, and SES, with students in higher grades, English proficient students, and those from higher SES backgrounds displaying higher scores, on average. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses identified CALS as an independent predictor of reading comprehension, even after controlling for academic vocabulary knowledge, word reading fluency, and socio-demographic factors. By specifying a set of language skills associated with reading comprehension, this study advances our understanding of school- relevant language skills, making them more visible for researchers and educators. ACADEMIC LANGUAGE & READING COMPREHENSION 3 Beyond vocabulary: Exploring cross-disciplinary academic language proficiency and its association with reading comprehension

Core academic language skills: An expanded operational construct and a novel instrument to chart school-relevant language proficiency in preadolescent and adolescent learners

ABSTRACTBeyond academic vocabulary, the constellation of skills that comprise academic language proficiency has remained imprecisely defined. This study proposes an expanded operationalization of this construct referred to as core academic language skills (CALS). CALS refers to the knowledge and deployment of a repertoire of language forms and functions that co-occur with school learning tasks across disciplines. Using an innovative instrument, we explored CALS in a cross-sectional sample of 235 students in Grades 4–8. The results revealed between- and within-grade variability in CALS. Psychometric analyses yielded strong reliability and supported the presence of a single CALS factor, which was found to be predictive of reading comprehension. Our findings suggest that the CALS construct and instrument appear promising for exploring students’ school-relevant language skills.