5.1 Language, Knowledge and Schooling
The knowledge that students are expected to learn becomes increasingly specialized over the span of their K-20 schooling. This knowledge is presented to students primarily through written texts in language that becomes progressively more technical, dense, abstract, and complex (Schleppegrell, 2004). For example, in the early years of schooling, history is typically presented to students as story-like representations of the past in genres such as autobiographical recount, biographical recount, and historical recount, where events are organized chronologically as they unfold in real time. By contrast, in later years of schooling, history is often presented to students as abstract interpretations of the past in genres such as historical account, historical explanation, and historical argument, where events are embedded as part of a causal/consequential explanation or an argument about the significance of a historical event (Coffin, 2006). This shift from narrative genres to expository genres is also found in science, where a similar knowledge path exists to apprentice students into the social practices of science — from doing science (with procedures and procedural recounts) to organizing science (with descriptive and taxonomic reports) and explaining science (with sequential, causal, factorial, and consequential explanations) to challenging science (with persuasion and discussion) (Veel, 1997).
These shifts involve transition from the grammar of mother tongue (i.e., speaking) through the grammar of literacy (i.e., writing) to the grammar of disciplinarity, with increased use of abstract and metaphoric language (Christie & Maton, 2011). The transition can be illustrated with two texts, presented below, that are about the same event in the U.S. history, the Boston Massacre. Text 5-1 (Brinkley et al., 2013, p. 127) is distinct from Text 5-2 (Kennedy, Cohen & Bailey, 2010, p. 110) in that the former tells the story in chronological order, using everyday language with which students are familiar, whereas the latter interprets the story using language that is symptomatic of written academic discourses featuring density, abstraction, and generalization.
Text 5-1
On March 5, 1770, violence erupted. A fight broke out between some Bostonians and soldiers. As British officers tried to calm the crowd, a man shouted, "We did not send for you. We will not have you here. We'll get rid of you. We'll drive you away!"
The angry townspeople surged forward. They began throwing sticks and stones at the soldiers. "Come on, you rascals, you bloody backs, you lobster scoundrels, fire, if you dare," someone in the crowd shouted.(https://www.daowen.com)
After one soldier was knocked down, the nervous redcoats did fire. They killed five colonists. Among the dead was Crispus Attucks, a dockworker who was part African, part Native American. One Bostonian cried: "Are the inhabitants to be knocked down in the streets? Are they to be murdered …?" The colonists called the tragic encounter "the Boston Massacre".
Text 5-2
British officials, faced with a breakdown of law and order, landed two regiments of troops in Boston in 1768. Many of the soldiers were drunken and profane characters. Liberty-loving colonists, resenting the presence of the red-coated "ruffians", taunted the "bloody backs" unmercifully.
A clash was inevitable. On the evening of March 5, 1770, a crowd of some sixty townspeople began taunting and throwing snowballs at a squad of ten redcoats. The Bostonians were still angry over the death of an elevenyear-old boy, shot ten days earlier during a protest against a merchant who had defied the colonial boycott of British goods. Acting apparently without orders, but nervous and provoked by the jeering crowd, the troops opened fire and killed or wounded eleven citizens, an event that became known as the Boston Massacre. One of the first to die was Crispus Attucks, described by contemporaries as a powerfully built runaway "mulatto" and a leader of the mob. Both sides were in some degree to blame, and in the subsequent trial (in which future president John Adams served as defense attorney for the soldiers), only two of the redcoats were found guilty of manslaughter. The soldiers were released after being branded on the hand.
It is the grammar of literacy and of disciplinarity, often referred to more generally as academic or disciplinary language, that presents challenges to students. These challenges, some of which were outlined in Chapter 4, are especially significant for students learning English as an additional or foreign language. They present formidable barriers to academic learning and disciplinary socialization. For example, Shao (2014) surveyed and interviewed 265 first-year students at a Chinese university who had studied English in formal academic settings for at least nine years. He reported that these students experienced English reading anxiety due to a lack of grammatical competence, control over reading strategies, interest in English, confidence in reading English, and content knowledge about Western culture. Clearly, students need support in developing advanced reading ability in order to successfully engage with academic texts of varying complexities across disciplines.