Journal of English for Academic Purposes 14 (2014) 60–71

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Journal of English for Academic Purposes

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/ jeap

Tracking movement toward academic languagein multilingual classrooms

Mariana Achugar a,*, Brian D. Carpenter b

aCarnegie Mellon University, Department of Modern Languages, Baker Hall 160, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USAb Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Department of English, Leonard Hall, Room 110, 421 NorthWalk, Indiana, PA 15705-1094, USA

Keywords:Disciplinary literacyHistoryFunctional grammarEnglish for academic purposesSecondary schoolMultilingual classrooms

* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 412 268 1895; faE-mail addresses: machugar@andrew.cmu.edu (M

1475-1585/$ – see front matter � 2014 Elsevier Ltdhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2013.12.002

a b s t r a c t

Learning history depends heavily on language and cultural references that students sup-posedly already know. Understanding how young people from multilingual backgroundsdevelop language in content area classrooms can help us better assist students to achievehigher levels of literacy needed to understand discipline-specific knowledge. Using theconceptual framework and analytic tools of Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday,1994) we analyze the changes in lexico-grammatical and discourse-semantic choices inlearners’ responses to two primary source history texts as indexes of academic languagedevelopment. The data comes from a larger study that explored the integration of textanalysis to history lessons focusing on primary sources and documenting the impact of theintervention on students’ disciplinary literacy development. In this paper, we focus on theconfiguration of linguistic indices that serve to track academic language development. Theanalysis shows changes in students’ linguistic choices that realize ways of reasoning andarguing typical of history. The findings show that it is important to document academiclanguage development in qualitative ways that capture the complexity of developmentconsidering constellations of linguistic features and how they function to serve discipline-specific ways of making meaning.

� 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Learning history depends heavily on language and cultural references that students supposedly already know to buildmore academic understandings of society, citizenship, and change. Understanding how young people from multilingualbackgrounds develop language in content area classrooms can help us better assist teachers and students to achieve higherlevels of literacy needed to understand discipline-specific knowledge. The transition from learning to read to reading to learnin adolescence incorporates challenges that have to do with the discipline-specific ways of reasoning, constructing argu-ments, and evaluating knowledge. These ways of knowing are realized through particular ways of using language that are notthose typically encountered in every day situations.

Using the conceptual frameworkandanalytic toolsof Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)weanalyze the changes in lexico-grammatical and discourse-semantic choices ofmultilingual learners production of academic discourse in history. This type ofanalysis can help us identify specific configurations of language resources functional in constructing disciplinary content. Thistype of functional analysis, that identifies and tracks changes in the linguistic choices that encode discipline-specific ways ofreasoning canhelp in assessment and instruction. The implications of this studyare important for supporting academic literacydevelopment of the growing number of linguistically and culturally diverse learners in U.S. high schools.

x: þ1 412 268 1328.. Achugar), brian.carpenter@iup.edu (B.D. Carpenter).

. All rights reserved.

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2. Academic language in the disciplines and language minorities

The linguistic minority population has increased significantly in the past few years. These students tend to lag behind inacademic achievement and grade level content norms. There is an achievement gap in schools between Hispanics, AfricanAmericans, and White students (Adger, Christian, & Taylor, 1999). Students of different language, racial and economic groupstend to be the ones that suffer the consequences of differential opportunity environments.1

According to Batalova, Fix, and Murray (2006), between 1996 and 2006 the nation’s K-12 English Language Learner (ELL)population rose by over 60 percent while the size of the overall student population essentially did not change. Of thesestudents, 56% (in 2005) were also poor or low income. The drop out rate for these students was also higher than that of theirpeers. On the other hand, scholarship on dialect diversity in U.S. classrooms has shown that vernacular and stigmatizeddialect speakers are also underperforming in academic measures. These students seem to be particularly affected by languageideologies that attribute less value to their ways of speaking and do not integrate them into the curriculum (Godley,Sweetland, Wheeler, Minnici, & Carpenter, 2006).

Cultural, linguistic and economic differences provide learners with different language experiences that result in differ-entiated linguistic resources. Thus, at school these learners are confronted with different cultural practices, literacy experi-ences and knowledge from those of their primary socialization. Developing academic language associated with differentdisciplines constitutes a secondary socialization that is part of secondary level schooling.

The multilingual linguistic characteristics of many U.S. public schools present both a need and an opportunity to explorethe role of academic language development in learning. Academic language development is an umbrella term used to refer tothe particular ways inwhich language is used in school contexts (e.g. Hyland, 2002; Schleppegrell, 2004). But at the secondaryschool level, students begin to encounter an academic language that displays some variation from one subject-matter to thenext. This type of language variation, according to area of knowledge and professional practice, is referred to as disciplinaryliteracy (e.g. Hyland, 2004; Lee, 2004; Moje et al., 2004). Disciplinary literacy is a recontextualization of professional practicethat provides access to specialized knowledge and ways of producing it.

In ourwork,we focus on this specialized academic language in subject-matterhistorycourses: disciplinary literacy inhistory.For those who come from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds than the mainstream students in U.S. schools, learningdisciplinary literacyposes fundamental challenges. Someof the students alreadyhave knowledgeof content thatmay transfer tothe new language, while others do not have experience with academic contexts in their home language. These multilingualclassrooms include minority language learners who are also being socialized into standard American English varieties andsecond language learners who are developing English as another language in their repertoire. All of these learners with verydifferent linguistic backgrounds run intomanyof the sameproblemswhen facedwithdisciplinary literacy. Theyall have a quasi-foreign relationship to the language they are trying to write and read (Green, 2002; Shaughnessy,1977; Siegel, 2010). For them,the development of disciplinary literacy entails learning a newway ofmakingmeanings, which together with the expansion oftheir linguistic repertoire incorporates a new way of using the resources to understand a field of knowledge (i.e. history).

In this paper, we report on part of a larger project that investigated the role of language in history classes to better un-derstand how the development of language awareness can support the development of a disciplinary gaze (Martin, Maton, &Matruglio, 2010). By disciplinary gaze we refer to the values and ways of understanding that are unique to the discipline. Weoperationalize disciplinary literacy as the representation and orientation choices that characterize meaning making practiceswithin the field. In this paper, we explore the development of linguistic resources that index ways in which learners ofdisciplinary literacy in history construct logical relations and an academic voice. First, we present how logico-semantic re-lations and interdependency relations function to construct sense and subjectivity between clauses in a text (Thibault,1991, p.58). The exploration of these logical structures can contribute to tracking the semantic construction of historical reasoning.Secondly, we explore the construction of a disciplinary voice.

We approach the development of disciplinary literacy through a functional linguistics perspective (Schleppegrell, Achugar,& Oteíza, 2004; Christie & Derewianka, 2008; Coffin, 2006; Fang & Schleppegrell, 2010; Martin, 2002; Martin et al., 2010;Schleppegrell & de Oliveira, 2006). This means we look at how language functions in texts and how historical meaningsare constructed through linguistic choices. We focus on the meaning making process as a socio-cultural practice throughwhich students are socialized into content, language and activities. The linguistic resources used to construct historicalunderstanding and themeaningmaking practices used to engagewith texts represent evidence of language development as aform of participatory appropriation (Rogoff, 1995).

Our focus in this part of the project2 was to document the linguistic resources that learners deployed when trying to makesense of disciplinarycontent texts. Inparticular,we looked at theways inwhich learners recontextualizedhistorical knowledge

1 According to California’s 2009 Base Annual Performance Index (API), race and class are linked to educational opportunity and systemic inequity ispervasive in California schools. Low income students and students of color are concentrated in the lowest-achieving schools.

2 This design experiment explored three questions: one dealing with how students’ understanding of history and disciplinary literacy developed throughtheir involvement in the intervention; the second dealt with the main features that characterized the disciplinary literacy lessons developed and finally weinvestigated how the teacher’s understanding of the role of language in the discipline changed throughout the experience. The focus of the interventionwas on reading comprehension of primary source documents and the development of critical language awareness based on research and integrating themto the regular curriculum. The impact of this intervention on students’ learning was assessed through a reading comprehension task designed by theresearchers which required students to produce written responses that are analyzed here as evidence of their appropriation of academic discourse.

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bywriting a summary of an author’s position on an issue. The analysis identifiedwhatwas picked up from the source texts andhow it was logically related, and how that information was evaluated and sourced. Our claim is that looking at how learnersdeploy logical organization of information, as well as evaluativemeaningmaking resources, can provide linguistic evidence ofacademic development and content understanding. Thismeans understanding reading comprehension andwriting responsesto texts as interrelated and dynamic meaning making processes realized through language. The following section providessome background information on previous studies exploring academic language development using a functional approach.

3. Disciplinary literacy development: lexico-grammatical and discourse-semantic resources

The meaning making practices of specialized communities are realized through particular discursive choices. Thedevelopment of thesemeaningmaking practices involves participation in activities that provide contextualized opportunitiesto use language in discipline-valued ways to meet the goal of constructing specialized knowledge.

Doing history is about constructing a narrative of what happened in the past and howwe evaluate it (Leinhardt, Stainton, &Virji, 1994; Martin et al., 2010). Previous research has shown there are distinctive ways of using language to represent,organize, and give value to the past (Achugar & Schleppegrell, 2005; Coffin, 2006; Martin, 2002; Martin et al., 2010). Thediscourse of history is characterized by abstracting periods of time, causal relations, evaluations, and arguments to construct ahistorical gaze (Martin et al., 2010). The linguistic resources through which this abstraction is realized include: nominali-zations, reasoning within the clause (use of verbs instead of conjunctions to establish logical relations), and ambiguous use ofconjunctions (conflation of time and cause). Evaluation is also deployed for disciplinary purposes to construct varied voicesthat entail different degrees of involvement and explicitness in marking the authors orientation toward the past (Coffin,2006). Most evaluations in history tend to be in judgments of social sanction (i.e. veracity, propriety) and social esteem(i.e. normality, capacity, tenacity) (Martin &White, 2005)3 using lexis, modification, comparison, and adverbs of manner andfrequency to construct particular stances. These studies on history disciplinary literacy from an SFL perspective have iden-tified linguistic features that distinguish this field and demonstrate the uniqueness of history in comparison to other fields.

Howdowedocument this learning todohistoryandhowdowedocumentusing language in thesediscipline-specificways?The tracking of semiotic development in SFL has been conceptualized as “a shift from commonsense ways of knowing to newforms of knowledge that are distinct and distinctive for educational knowledge” (Byrnes, 2006, p. 4). It is a movement fromcongruent language as action, toward incongruent language that is outward centered (Halliday, 1999). In this language-basedtheoryof learning, thismovement canbe trackedbydocumenting the lexico-grammatical anddiscourse semantic features thatlearners produce over time (e.g. Christie & Derewianka, 2008). Among the resources that have been identified as indexes ofdevelopment in semioticmeaningpotential are: lexical density, grammatical intricacy, clause combining resources,4 andmeta-discourse choices (i.e. attitude, engagement, graduation5). What constitutes evidence of development is not just counting thefeatures, but howthesebundles of linguistic choices function in a text. For example, evidence of an academic voicewouldnotbeonly the use of technical lexis, but the configuration of technical lexis, evaluation and reference operating together.

Ourmain focus in thispaper ison thoseconfigurationsof linguistic features that serve toconstruct anargumentandconceptualunderstanding. By looking at logical relations between clauses, we can show how learners establish connections between ideasand go beyond mere reporting (projection) to interpretation and evaluation (expansion). This is important in history becausehistoriansworkwithin the “explanation space” (Wineburg,1991), where they knowwhat happened, but need to reconstruct thegoals and the context inwhich it happened to explain it. So tracking the linguistic features associatedwith the logical organizationof ideas (i.e. parataxis, hypotaxis, embedding, projectionandexpansion) can also serve tounderstandhowstudentsmake senseofhistoricalevidenceandcometoa reasonedconclusion.Theother linguistic featureswe foregroundare thoseutilized toconstructaparticular disciplinary gaze realized by configurations of interpersonal meanings such as technical lexis, deixis, reporting verbs,modals, intensification, and evaluation. In the following section, we present details about the particular study and its results.

4. The study: participants, method, and findings

This paper reports on data from a larger longitudinal study on learning and teaching history in multilingual classroomsconducted during a seven-month period in 2008–2009. It was a design experiment (Brown, 1992; Collins, Joseph, & Bielaczyc,

3 In Martin & White’s (2005) model there are three types of attitudes that represent institutionalized ways of expressing our evaluations of reality:judgment that deals with the evaluation of behavior in terms of moral or personal values; appreciation that deals with the evaluation of products asesthetic or physical attributes; and affect that evaluates reactions in emotional terms.

4 According to Halliday (1994, p. 215–218) to account for the functional organization of clauses we can interpret the relations between clauses in terms oflogical component of the linguistic system. There are two systematic dimensions in this interpretation: interdependency (tactic system: parataxis andhypotaxis) and the logico-semantic system (expansion and projection). Beyond describing the relationship between clauses as modification this linguisticinterpretation allows us to enrich the description to account for the two dimensions of interdependency distinguishing the status of the modifying ele-ments (equal ¼ parataxis; unequal ¼ hypotaxis); and the logico-semantic relation that describes the modification as a relationship of expansion (secondaryclause expands the primary by elaborating, extending or enhancing it) or of projection (secondary clause is reported as an idea or locution).

5 According to Martin and White (2005) interpersonal meanings are construed through semantic resources (negotiation, appraisal and involvement). Theappraisal system represents one of the ways in which power and solidarity are realized at the discourse semantic level. Appraisal includes three areas:attitude concerned with institutionalized feelings (affect, judgment, appreciation), engagements which deals with sources of attitudes (heterogloss ormonogloss) and graduation through which attitudes are graded (focus and force).

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2004), where we collaboratively designed a disciplinary literacy intervention to integrate a language focus on history classesand then documented the implementation and effects of it on student learning and the teacher’s concept of disciplinaryliteracy. As part of the design experiment, students were given an assessment specifically created to address the featurestargeted in the intervention: aspects related to text production such as genre, audience, representations (i.e. verb, participantchoices) and interpersonal positionings (i.e. evaluative lexis, modality, sourcing) as well as those related to the reception oftexts (e.g. intertextual links and inferences). This paper focuses on data from the responses to the reading comprehension ofprimary sources assessment given at the beginning and at the end of the semester in five high school academic track Americanhistory classes taught by the same teacher.

4.1. Participants

Participants came from one high school in an urban school district in South Texas. The district serves a population ofstudents designated as 63% economically disadvantaged and 27% Limited English Proficiency. The district is rated asacademically acceptable and the high school is one of those meeting adequate yearly progress.

The teacher volunteered to participate in the study and integrate three text analysis focused lessons into the regularAmerican history curriculum.6 He had 4 years of teaching experience and a major in history with no previous linguisticstraining, nor special ESL credentials. The students were enrolled in the academic track American history course, and thegrades the students were in ranged from 9 to 12th. The students had been placed in this academic track for their lower ac-ademic achievement in the standardized state history test (TAKS). Their ages ranged from 15 to 18 years old. The districtcollected data that differentiated them by their English language abilities and ethnic background. The English LanguageLearners (ELLs) were assessed with a Home Language Survey, an oral language proficiency assessment, and the language artsand reading section of a norm-referenced tests (scores below 40th percentile were considered English limited proficient).Some of the students were still receiving ESL support while other participating students had already exited the program.Students were not identified by their language background history once they had been reclassified as English proficient. Otherstudents in the group included speakers of African American English and social dialects. The ethnic background of studentswas diverse including: Hispanic, White, Black, Asian and Native American (as labeled by the district). There were 94 studentsin total, 15% designated ELLs, 15% as African American and 70% as Other.

4.2. Method

The design experiment included several phases that integrated the careful documentation of the intervention and itscontext as well as documentation of the effects of the intervention. During the preliminary phase the teacher participated in asummer intensive workshop on the functional approach to disciplinary literacy (Achugar & Stainton, 2010, 2012) and thendeveloped in collaborationwith the first author three focal lessons to be implemented throughout the semester (for a detaileddescription of the lessons see Carpenter, Earhardt, & Achugar, in press). In the next phase, observations, collection of artifacts,and interviews were done. The teacher was interviewed before and after the implementation of each of the lessons. Thesewere semi-structured interviews that also functioned as guided participation (Rogoff, 1995) in the apprenticeship into thedisciplinary literacy model. Observations were conducted throughout the semester to document class structure, lessonimplementation, classroom discourse, and students’ response. A pre and post assessment of students reading comprehensionand language awareness of primary sources was given at the beginning and at the end of the semester.7

4.3. Intervention

The intervention involved the teaching of three disciplinary literacy based lessons during the semester (one at thebeginning, one in the middle and one in the end). Each lesson included detailed analysis of language in an extract from aprimary source document. These lessons were part of an arc of lessons about a particular historical event set by thecurriculum.

The language focused lessons had the following defining features: 1) worked with excerpts of primary source documents;2) looked closely at wordings at the sentence level to explore the representation of events and participants and the authors’orientation to them; 3) the teacher used metalanguage to describe linguistic and historical meanings; 4) included guidedpractice and group practice of text analysis; 5) connected language analysis to historical issues. The lessons were organizedaround a primary source text and focused on making students aware of how linguistic choices construct particular historicalmeanings. The basic pedagogical move was to make explicit the range of choices available to the authors and howmeaningfulthe choices made were in historical terms. For example, in the conversations around the Declaration of Independence, theteacher asked students to look closely at the wording of the text to be able to understand the historical significance of thesechoices. He asked them about the phrase “we hold these truths to be self evident”, by first directing them to identify the verb

6 See Achugar (2009) for a more detailed description of the work done with teachers and the type of language focused literacy lessons developed in thisproject.

7 See Achugar and Carpenter (2012) for a more detailed description of the study and the lessons.

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and then the participant associated with it. Students nominated several options to retrieve the referent for “we”: the gov-ernment, people of the US, and those whowrote the document. Then the teacher guided them to explore the meaning of “selfevident” and asked for other alternative options to that choice. The main focus in this discussion was on showing howmeanings are made through particular choices and trying to unpack the text by retrieving the information that is assumedand can be inferred by a knowledgeable reader. The goal was to help students make inferences about the implicit informationand showhowwe canmake a historical reading bymaking certain connections. By highlighting certainword choices (e.g. “wehold these truths”) and requesting an inference from students (e.g. “the writers”, “government”) the teacher made studentsreflect about the deeper historical meaning of the document. Who are the historical actors involved in this event? Whatinterests and ideology do they represent? The meaning of one choice emerges from the contrast of it to all the other possiblechoices in that particular context.

The following example illustrates a typical interaction around text where large group lesson led to pair work, which askedthe students to pair with a peer and to compare Section 13 of the Virginia Declaration of Rights to the state ratified version ofthe Second Amendment in the US Constitution. The texts were followed by a set of four questions. The sheet was as follows:

Section 13 of VA Declaration of Rights (June 12th, 1776)

That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safedefense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that, in allcases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and be governed by, the civil power.

2nd Amendment (December 15th, 1791)

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms,shall not be infringed.

1. What differences do you see between these two passages?

2. What does Section 13 include that the 2nd Amendment leaves out?

3. What the 2nd Amendment includes that Section 13 leaves out?

4. How do you think our country would be different if Section 13 was actually the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution?

The teacher passed out the sheet and asked that the students think how the language choices in the texts help to makemeaning for the text. These instructions were building off the textual deconstruction on the Declaration of Independence thatthey had done earlier as a whole class. The teacher walked around the room answering specific questions and monitoringprogress for about 8min, after which the teacher projected both texts on the screen. The teacher asked the students to presenttheir answers. To the question that asked about differences, one student suggested Section 13 to mean, “that the militaryshould be governed by the people” and that the document says there should be “no military in times of peace”. The teacherasked the class, “What specifically in the text says ‘no military in time of peace’?” A student responded by pointing out howthe texts differ around themention of peace. The teacher then asked about the meaning of “standing armies” and the talk wasabout how the term “standing armies”was defined. The follow up question to this was “howwould our country be different ifwe had Section 13 in the Constitution and not the 2nd Amendment?” A student responded, “I think the military and gunowners would be more tightly controlled, it would be more difficult to own guns.” And the lesson ended with questions andstatements about whether the draft would be necessary if no standing army were allowed.

It is important to highlight the brevity of the intervention to assess the findings presented below.

4.4. Analysis

The data analyzed in the paper is only one section of the assessment completed by students. For information about the restof the study please see Author (2012). The assessment was administered in two separate sessions, once at the beginning,before the intervention, and once at the end of the semester, after the intervention. The reading comprehension tasksinvolved getting information from a primary source, interpreting it, and making inferences (see Appendix A). The analysispresented below focuses only on the interpretation question where students had to explain the position of the author aboutone of the two topics (slavery and immigration). This sectionwas selected because it is the one where students were asked tomake sense of the primary source text. The questions given to students were the following:

Start of the semester

Task 1.Based on the information you located in the text, what can you conclude about the author’s position regardingequality among people? Write a short summary of the author’s opinion about equality among people.

End of the semester

Task 2 Based on the information you located in the document, what can you conclude about the authors’ positionregarding the possible reasons for deporting immigrants? What did they want to do with anarchists and radical im-migrants?Write a short summary of the authors’ opinions about anarchists and the actions they took to dealwith them.

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The students had about 30 min to complete the whole reading comprehension task, which was done as part of regularclass work, and observed by the second author. The texts were not edited or revised by students. The analysis methods aredescribed below.

Students’ longhand written texts were typed by the researchers to form a corpus of 184 texts. The mean number of wordsof these written responses were 32 for the Pre-test and 38 for the Post-test.8 All texts were divided into clauses manually. Wecalculated the lexical density (number of content words per total number of clauses), grammatical intricacy (number of clausecomplexes per total number of clauses), and coded for use of technical vocabulary, colloquial vocabulary, and features thatconstruct a presentation of self-as authority (i.e. mental or saying verbs [projection], modality, use of personal pronouns,attitudes [appreciation and judgment, no affect]). We also coded for the interdependency between clauses (parataxis, hy-potaxis and embedding9) and logico-semantic relations (projection and expansion). We had a 91% rate of inter-coder reli-ability. After all students’ answers were coded, we calculated averages per group and frequencies of occurrence for the logicalsystem.We also run a matched t-test and checked the strength of association using eta2 to see how important that differencewas (Hatch & Lazaraton, 1991). In addition, we searched for patterns within and across groups and tried to track movementfrom more common sense to more disciplinary ways of making meaning (see description above). Then we did a textualanalysis of each text to identify how these resources functioned in each particular text. In the next section, we present thegeneral findings for the groups according to language background and ethnicity (as designated by the district10), and thenpresent a few examples of changewithin individuals from each of the groups to have amore detailed text analysis to illustratewhat development of disciplinary literacy looks like in a multilingual classroom.11

4.5. Findings

Across all groups (English Language Learners [ELLs], African Americans [AA], and Other learners [OL]) there were increasesfrom Task 1 to Task 2 in number of words produced, lexical density, and grammatical intricacy. All students used morelanguage (number of words increased by 31%), changed their grammatical intricacy (14% difference), and used a wider rangeof clause types (i.e. parataxis, hypotaxis, embedding [32% increase]). Fig. 1 shows these results. The change in number ofwords was statistically significant (t ¼ 4.06, p < .001, h2 ¼ 0.18); as well as the increase in the type of clauses used or tacticsystem resource expansion (t ¼ 3.42, p < .001, h2 ¼ 0.14).

This chart shows how there is a movement toward more academic discourse because the number of words increased andthe lexical density tends to go up (even though it is not statistically significant). However, this increase in the number ofcontent words and total number of words in the texts comes without a change in the types of structural or logical relationsbetween ideas as expressed through grammatical intricacy. Based on previous studies (e.g. Christie & Derewianka, 2008) weexpected to find less subordination and more grammatical metaphor12 producing more abstract and compact texts. But eventhough this was not observed in our data, there was some indication that students were producing more complex texts (asseen in the increase in length and in the tactic system choices).

A closer look at clause relations showed that at the clause interdependency system all learners expanded their range ofclause complex choices. This means they not only used more paratactic clauses (clauses of equal status, [50% increase]), butalso increased their use of hypotaxis (clauses of unequal status, [16% increase]) across tasks. Single slanted lines mark hy-potaxis (/), double slanted lines (//) mark parataxis and straight brackets ([ ]) mark embedding. For example,

8 Everesourcinforma

9 Emto dinne10 Wethese glanguaglanguagperspecparticipmeaninsimilariliteracy11 The12 Gratypicallthrough

1) Student ID# 1019

It seems like/ he believes /that the King of Great Britain is using his power in a wrong way./ (Task 1, pre-test)

The author of this document obviously believes /that “aliens” (immigrants) came here [[to over throw the US govern-ment,// kill government officials //and teach things [[that are not organized by the government]].]/ (Task 2, post-test)

n though these texts are very short they provide evidence for how students made meaning from the reading and display their meaning makinges in terms of how they represented the information they got from the source text they responded to as well as how they oriented toward thistion.bedding is a rank shift “by which a clause or phrase comes to function within the structure of a group, like who came to dinner in the man who camer. [.] The characteristic function of an embedded element is as Post modifier in a nominal group”. (Halliday, 1994, p. 242).know it is problematic to analyze the groups based on ethno-linguistic labels assigned by the district. However, we present the data distinguishingroups to make the point that in disciplinary literacy development the differences across ethno-linguistic groups are not really useful. Academice development in subject matter contexts at the secondary school level is a process of second socialization for all. This register specific ways of usinge require the development of new linguistic resources or the deployment of already existing resources in new ways. From a socio-cultural historicaltive informed by a Vygotskyan theoretical framework, the learning trajectory of individuals is directly related to the social experience they haveated in. So, an ELL who has been schooled in his native language and has already had experiences with disciplinary literacy in his/her L1 may makegs in more discipline-specific ways than someone who has never had experience with language used in that situation. Because there are moreties within register across languages, than across registers within the same language (Biber, 1995); it would be possible to expect disciplinarylearning trajectories that do not correspond to learners ethno-linguistic identity.examples presented are the entire responses given by the students and have not been edited or redacted.mmatical metaphor is a “cross-coupling [.] between grammatical classes” (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004, p. xvi). For example, meanings arey made through words and structures such as processes through verbs; but in grammatical metaphor the meanings of processes can be representednouns (E.g. We walked for two miles ¼> the walk was two miles long).

Fig. 1. Overall results by group.

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Learners were attempting to combine ideas and had more ways of doing it. Fig. 2 below shows the change in the type ofclause combining resources.

In Fig. 2, the changes in clause combining resources show more use of subordination (hypotaxis, [16% increase]) andembedding (30% increase), which index a move toward more academic like language. Information was organized in terms ofideas and reasons instead of actors, which required the students to use more inter-clausal activity (subordination) and moreintra-clausal compression of information (embedding).

We then looked at the logical function of these clauses to have a better sense of what the learners were trying to do byusing more clause complexes: reporting (projection) or developing the meaning (expansion). The analysis of logico-semanticrelations showed change to a higher use of expansion (64% increase). They were going beyond restating what the author hadsaid (using projection), to expanding the information through their own interpretation of other’s discourse (using expansion).In example 2, we can observe changes in the type of logical relations among clauses in the production of one student acrossthe semester.

2) Student ID# 1069

The author think [sic] /that slavery is violating sacred human rights. (Task 1, pre-test)

Projection

They don’t like anarchists/// they believe/ that they are messing up the organization of everything.//So in order to keepeverything in order/ they have to get rid of them. (Task 2, post-test)

Projection and expansion (adding information)

This learner moves from reporting what the author has said in the pre-test, to being able to establish a causal relationshipbetween the events by expanding the information including the consequences of the author’s position about immigration.

Fig. 3 shows the changes in logico-semantic relations across groups.In Fig. 3, we can observe that there is an increase in the use of expansion indexing a more incongruent way of elaborating

on the meaning of another clause by further specifying, adding, or qualifying it. This linguistic change reveals meaningmaking with a critical approach toward information that moves beyond mere reporting. Since they are not only giving backwhat the text says, but also establishing connections among the information that are not directly stated in the source text theyread.

Fig. 2. Changes in clause combining resources.

Fig. 3. Changes in logico-semantic relations.

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The analysis of how students positioned themselves as authorities in the subject-matter constructing an authoritativevoice was also examined. The most interesting findings revealed a general move toward more endophoric reference (termsthat point to inside the text constructing a shared context instead of assuming it) and different use of attitudes and graduation(Martin & White, 2005). The use of modality (verbs, adjectives, adverbs that express degrees of probability, usuality, obli-gation and inclination) also changed across tasks. These configurations of resources demonstrate an awareness of audienceand adoption of a stance that reveals an understanding that doing history is not just about the ideas, but also about theorientation to those ideas.

The following examples show changes in how students moved to constructing a more authoritative voice. We selectedexamples from each group (ELLs, AA, OL) that would show the range of choices made within the group to give a sense of theiroverall meaning potential.

Example 3 is from an English language learner that displays an incipient control of academic language resources.

3) Student ID#1065

He declare/ that slave [sic] must have equality //and refute George III unworthy way.///. (Task 1, pre-test)

Everything have to [sic] be legal,// and government must eliminate communists./// (Task 2, post-test)

Example 3 shows the use of exophoric reference pointing to a shared context outside the text (“he”), which assumes thereader has the same information as the writer and has also read the source text. Then in the post-test there is no mention ofthe source. The other interesting feature is the use of modality, “must” and “have to”, in both pre and post-test indicating ahigh degree of obligation to construct a tone of moral evaluation. Graduation is also used to raise the level of the evaluationthrough quantification, “everything”, as well as through attitudinal lexis like “refute” and “eliminate” pointing to a moreacademic voice. Even though there is no striking change in the resources used to construct an academic voice we can see thevariety of linguistic resources the student is deploying to position himself as an authority on the subject matter. Throughthese linguistic choices we can see the student’s deployment of evaluation resources in ways that are more congruent withthe discipline. He understands that the historical debate on these issues revolves around the extent of the rights and the focusof those limitations. By using graduation (e.g. everything) andmodality (e.g. have to) the student highlights the importance ofobligations and applications of rights and laws in these two cases. There is also a clear identification of participants to whomthese obligations and rights benefit or are applied to which again demonstrates an understanding of who the key historicalactors involved were. In the post-test, this is further refined by naming the actor and not assuming it is shared knowledge forthe audience.

Example 4 shows what a more advanced ELL can do with more developed use of academic language resources.

4) Student ID#1052

He sees /that there is not equality //& that it should be equality among men //but because of the government & the soldof slaves & the injustices commited [sic] /it should came [sic] equality./// (Task 1, pre-test)

They related the anarchists & the immigrant in a same group /by putting some too stricts [sic] measures to deal withanarchists //but at the same time including the immigrants./// The author only talks about [[what would [sic] happenedif they found out that they where [sic] anarchists ]]/but they don’t explain [[what measures are they gonna take forAmericans [that want communism]]]. (Task 2, post-test)

The second ELL example shows a more evident change in terms of constructing an academic voice. The student movesfrom using exophoric reference (“he”) in the pre-test, to a combined use of external and internal reference (“They” and “Theauthor”) that points to a change in process in the development toward more academic like voice. The instability and coex-istence of exophoric and endophoric reference highlight a certain awareness of the need to construct the context for the

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audience instead of assuming it is shared. The use of modality indicates a medium degree of moral obligation “should” in bothtasks. But in the second task this use of modality is also combined with graduation (“too”) and comparisons to construct anevaluative stance critiquing the author’s position. This configuration of linguistic choices reveals the variety of resources thatcontribute to the construction of a more authoritative voice. In addition, we see that in the post test the student is alsopointing to a loop hole in the argument, since anarchists and communists are conflated with immigrants the legislators havenot contemplated another case: the citizens who want to spouse communism. This subtle understanding of the roles andpositioning is displayed through sourcing and mentioning of what is not there through use of negation (“they don’t say”).

In example 5, we observe the change in academic voice of an African American student’s text with less developed aca-demic language choices.

5) Student ID #1067

The author is for equality of all people./// He feels /that the kind is not giving the people [what they need]. ///He doesn’ttreat the people [the way they should be]./// The slaves don’t get the rights [they desearve [sic]]. (Task 1, pre-test)

It seems like/ the author didn’t really want other people here. ///He seems [to like lay out a bunch of laws on [what theycan’t do]]],// and if they break them/ then he they can be deported// or put in jail. (Task 2, post-test)

The student in example 5 uses endophoric reference (“the author”) in both tests showing he has awareness of the need toconstruct the context for his audience, which clearly situates his discourse in an academic context. In both pre and post-tests,there is a reliance on mental processes and affective attitude to construct evaluation (“treat”, “deserve”). There is also someuse of modality to point to the moral critique of the position presented by the author. The second task shows a cleardistinction between the author and the writer’s position. The voice of the student is integrated by commenting on the others’intentions through and impersonal construction “it seems”. There is also more hedging of evaluation (“seems”). In this case,there is a clear expansion of linguistic resources to construct the more academic voice, while there are still some uses thatindex less appropriate choices like colloquial vocabulary (“a bunch of”, “he seems to like lay”).

Example 6 shows the texts of an African American student who shows more change toward more academic like languagechoices.

6) Student ID# 1146

He thought /everyone should and could be equal. /That every man is free. (Task1, pre-test)

He has good reasons[[ to deport them]]./// The act says/ they have a felony //then get deported back. //So if I was aterrorist //and I got kicked out of America //then I came back// I would have to pay //and get kicked out. (Task 2, post-test)

Example 6 shows exophoric reference (“he”) in both tests and a reliance on mental and saying verbs (“thought” and“says”), modality (“should and could” and “would have to”), and graduation (“everyone” and “good reasons”), to construct anevaluation of the position of the author. The second task shows also the integration of mood and analogy as lexico-grammatical and rhetorical resources to construct an evaluation. The construction of a scenario where the author putshimself in the position of the actors depicted in the text demonstrates the ability to use a complex tense andmood system (“ifI was then I would have”) as well as an understanding of the consequences of the actions taken by the legislators who wrotethe text. There is an expansion of interpersonal meaning making resources which results in an elaboration of the writer’sposition building onwhat the text says and evaluating it. Here we observe that the student is able to go from reporting of theother’s opinion, which is part of what is valued in history, to evaluating it and considering what it would mean in terms ofconsequences for individuals. The post-test shows the student going into more explanatory modes that highlight the value ofthe position being presented and also the meaning in terms of what it implied for those affected by it. This double-layeredunderstanding of what is in the text, together with its social effects reflects a movement toward more historicalunderstanding.

In example 7, we can observe the production of Other learner (non-designated) where there is some development ofacademic language between tasks.

7) Student ID# 1097

He is against slavery./// He thinks that/ it is cruel, //but he knows [[he cant do anything about it.]]/// He blamed the King.(Task 1, pre-test)

The authors opinions about immigrants and anarchists was [[that he didn’t like them]]./// He thought /that the an-archists were people [[who wrongly influenced migrants to do bad things.]]” (Task 2, post-test)

This example shows in the pre-test a reliance on exophoric reference (“he”) that is changed in the post-test to explicitidentification of the source (“the authors’ opinions”). In the pre-test, there is use of mental processes (“thinks”) and projectionto introduce the other’s views in a congruent way. However, in the post-test we can observemore incongruent forms to bringin the other’s view by using the nominalization “the author’s opinions”, which makes his ideas a thing that can be elaboratedon and evaluated more indirectly. There is also a movement from the direct encoding of evaluation through interplay mo-dality (“can’t”) and graduation (“anything”) to more indirect encodings in the post-test where modification is used to

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introduce the writer’s evaluation (“who wrongly influenced”). In the pre-test, there is also use of attitudinal lexis to inscribeaffective and moral evaluations through word choices like “cruel” and “blamed”. In the post-test, the choices are similar andwith high frequency vocabulary, “bad” and “didn’t like them”. These resources point to a developmental point that moves inbetween congruent and incongruent constructions and shows an incipient academic voice. The change in language choicesincorporates a change in the thinking process whereby the student is able to understand the importance of sourcing byidentifying historical actors and also move from more affective reactions to more social judgments favored in the discipline.

Example 8 displays a different type of language development in a student from the OL group, and the example highlightsthe different types of academic resources deployed in constructing an academic voice.

8) Student ID # 1081)

The authors view of slavery & equality was important./// Hewanted [[to have equality & get the King out of the way andout of power.]] (Task 1, pre-test)

The authors [sic] views towards immigrants is extreamly [sic] racist & narrow minded. ///Also toward anarchist heshows a very short leash [[givin [sic]to them about being exported and punished.]]/// The author (being the U.S.) at thistime was //and still is [[very messed up with immigration and religious views]]./// The actions they took wereintimidation, deportation. (Task 2, post-test)

In example 8, the author is identified explicitly (“the author’s view”) through a nominalization that allows the position tobe fore-grounded and evaluated impersonally in terms of moral qualities (“important”). The post-test reveals a higherdegree of evaluation using graduation (“very”) and attitudinal lexis (“narrow minded”). However, the attitudinal lexis comesmainly from colloquial language (“short leash” and “messed up”), which gives the piece a marked voice in academic terms.This learner has began to use some of the typical linguistic choices to construct an academic voice, such as the use ofendophoric reference and relational processes with embedding to evaluate presenting her position through graduation andmodification instead of interpersonal comments. This student shows awareness of sourcing and evaluation as distinct re-quirements of disciplinary discourse. In addition, there is a change from the pre to the post-test by which the student is ableto incorporate the consequences of the author’s position in terms of legislation and social actions that derive from theauthor’s position. This exploration of social consequences in relation to historical actors actions is a valued way of reasoningin history.

These examples from students’ of all groups demonstrate how they deploy a variety of similar linguistic resources toencode their subjectivity in texts and construct a historical understanding of events. These texts, although brief, give us apicture of the complexity of academic language and howawide range of lexico-grammatical and discourse-semantic featurescontribute to the construction of academic voice.

The analysis tried to show development across all groups as participatory appropriations (Rogoff, 1995). We captured asnapshot of development where learners were experimenting with the explanation space through the use of a variety ofclause combining resources using clause complexing (parataxis and hypotaxis) and compression of information (embedding).As other studies have shown, the increase in the use of coordination (parataxis) serves as a steppingstone to try subordination(hypotaxis). This indicates development of clause combining resources and an expansion of meaning making resources to-ward the packaging of more information within a clause. This structural change together with the changes in the logicalrelations between clauses reveals that students were able to combine ideas in different ways to elaborate on the meaningspresented in the text, not just reproduce them. These new deployments of linguistic resources enabled students to make newmeanings and express new ways of reasoning which are valued in the discipline.

Therewas also an increase in amount of language produced, showing howwords were used to evaluatewhat occurred in ahistorical moment. The increase in evaluation and expansion shows an attempt to reach a reasoned conclusion. Learnersmoved along a continuum of development toward the construction of more abstract and incongruent ways of encodingsubjectivity that showed awareness of sourcing and perspective. Their interaction with the text became more critical withtime and opened up a space to work on a wider range of linguistic resources that could be used to comment while sum-marizing the source text.

5. Conclusions

This study shows the dynamic and non-linear nature of academic language development and highlights the common-alities across learners from different linguistic backgrounds grouped in the same content class. Linguistic differences show acontinuous rather than discrete correlation with social traits (Wolfram, 2004, p. 61). The linguistic differences across groupsare few in comparison to the similarities. In contrast, there is a lot of variation within groups that results from the differentexperiences and language trajectories learners have had with this particular disciplinary context. So instead of designingdifferent types of interventions to socialize language minority students into disciplinary literacy, we may find benefits inincorporating explicit language focus in content area classrooms. In multilingual classrooms there are opportunities to workon language and content simultaneously that can benefit all students and not only ELLs or vernacular dialect speakers.Engaging in meaningful analysis of primary source texts and focusing on how language is used to construct concepts canmake the academic language visible to all students to help them recognize and realize the valued and context-specific ways ofusing language in the discipline (Fang & Schleppegrell, 2010; Hyland, 2002; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008).

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Understanding writing development requires us to explore language and content as co-constitutive to see how the lin-guistic choices function to construct discipline-specific meanings. As we tried to show in our analysis, the deployment of avariety of clause combining resources enables learners to establish relationships between ideas by expanding meanings andconnecting them logically to construct an explanatory space. In addition, the use of a configuration of resources to evaluateand positionwriters in relation to ideas and sources enables them to become aware of sourcing and contextualizing which arekey elements of historical discourse (Leinhardt & Young, 1996).

Functional approaches to language have the potential to foreground the interconnectedness between language andcontent specific meanings. By making explicit the links between wordings and meanings functional approaches reveal theways in which knowledge is constructed through and in language. Interventions that have used this approach have yieldedinteresting results (Gebhard, Harman, & Seger, 2007; Schleppegrell et al., 2006) encouraging the continued investigation anddesign of ways to make explicit discussions about language part of disciplinary literacy practices.

The changes in language use shown here cannot be directly attributed to the intervention because this was not a controlledexperiment. However, what we present here, the development of more discipline-specific ways of using language togetherwith reasoning and evaluation, offer us some incentive to continue looking into the potential this type of approach has. Futurestudies should explore, using an experimental design and classroom discourse, the relationship between language devel-opment, content understanding, and a functional approach to disciplinary literacy.

It is important to highlight that our findings show diversity within subgroups (i.e. ELLs, AA, OL) to understand theimportance of doing discourse analysis together with large quantitative corpus descriptions. English language learners orlanguage minority learners are not all the same even though they may be placed in the same grade level or classroom. Allstudents’ needs and paths of development differ according to the experiences they have had with academic language. AsBernstein has pointed out, the repertoire of each member of the community will have both a common nucleus but there willbe differences between the repertoires. There will be differences between the repertoires because of the differences betweenmembers arising out of differences in members context and activities and their associated issues. (2000, p. 158)

This difference in experience is revealed in the differences in writing development revealed in this corpus. However, thelearning of disciplinary literacy is something all students are facing when learning to use language to understand subjectmatter content. This secondary socialization is a shared experience and something that can be scaffolded to ensure access tonew ways of knowing and new ways of using language.

In this study, the teacher’s work with text analysis of primary sources in the history class focused on developing recog-nition rules (Bernstein, 2000) to identify the ways in which language was used to construct historical knowledge. But therewas no explicit instruction related to realization rules (Bernstein, 2000). The focus on critical language awareness does notnecessarily transfer to writing production. Explicit focus and feedback on rules of realization in discipline-specific practicesseems to be necessary to enhance writing development (Hyland, 2002). The qualitative reorganization within individual’srepertoire and between individuals in the group is connected to changes in the system of interaction (Vygotsky, 1978).Engaging in conversations around texts in discipline-specific ways can support academic development. The minimal inter-vention reported here created a space to think and talk about the role of language in historical understanding.

Our recommendation to content-area teachers working in multilingual classrooms is to use linguistic diversity as aninstructional resource. Integratinganexplicit discussionabout languageandmeaning in textual choices allows for adiscussionoflanguage that centers on content and puts language analysis at the service of it. Engaging in contrastive analysis to explorewhatother choicesmaymeancanexplain the importanceandsocial significanceof saying “the textexplainswhat slavery is” insteadof“it talks about slavery”. In addition, making the reading process public and shared can slow it down and help all students un-derstand it. Bymaking discussions about language relevant to the content area, languageminority learners are given a chance toask questions about language without being singled out as individual problems, and these discussions thus become reflectionsabout language valuable to all. This type of reflexive critical language awareness (Hasan, 1996) can empower all students.

Acknowledgments

This project was funded by a Spencer Small Research Grant #200800158, Teaching and learning history in a multilingualclassroom, given to the first author. We would like to thank the teachers and students for their collaboration in this project. Inaddition, Gaea Leinhardt, Kate Stainton, JoanMohr and Anita Ravi were instrumental in the design of the project and assistingwith the connections at the site. We are also thankful to Mary Schleppegrell and Amy Crosson for their comments. NaokoTaguchi offered us her help with the statistical analyses, we are greatly indebted to her. We are also appreciative of theanonymous reviewers’ suggestions. The problems and mistakes left are our sole responsibility.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data related to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2013.12.002.

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Mariana Achugar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Language at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focuses on academic lan-guage development, disciplinary literacy, bilingual professional identity and political discourse analysis. Her work integrates Systemic Functional Linguisticsand Critical discourse analysis with ethnographic methods.

Brian Carpenter is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the role of language inconcept development within content area classrooms and on academic language development of language minority students. His work incorporatesVygotsky, Halliday and Bernstein’s theories to explore the sociocognitive, semiotic and social aspects of advanced literacy.