meaning within the disciplines.... Each discipline has its own culture and ways of reading, writing,
speaking, thinking, and reasoning.” They continue by describing features of advanced literacy within
four disciplines (figure 7.11).
Figure 7.11. Advanced Literacy in Four Disciplines[S]cientists construct theoretical explanations of the physical world through investigations
that describe, model, predict, and control natural phenomena (Yore et al 2004). The task
of... historian[s], on the other hand, is interpretive, investigating events in the past
in order to better understand the present by reading documents and examining evidence,
looking for corroboration across sources, and carefully thinking about the human motivations
and embedded attitudes and judgments in the artifacts examined (Wineburg 2001).
Mathematicians see themselves as problem-solvers or pattern-finders who prize precision
and logic when working through a problem or seeking proofs for mathematical axioms,
lemmas, corollaries, or theorems (Adams 2003). Language arts experts attach great
significance to the capacity for creating, responding to, and evaluating texts of various kinds
(Christie & Derewianka 2008). These varied ways of meaning-making call on particular ways
of using spoken and written language as well as a range of multimodal representations (Coffin
& Derewianka 2009; O’Halloran 2005; Unsworth 2008).Source
Fang, Zhihui, Mary J. Schleppegrell, and Jason Moore. 2013. “The Linguistic Challenges of Learning Across
Disciplines.” In Handbook of Language and Literacy: Development and Disorders, 2nd ed., edited by C. Addison
Stone, Elaine R. Silliman, Barbara J. Ehren, and Geraldine P. Wallach, 1–2. New York: Guilford Press.From this perspective, speakers and writers make deliberate choices about how they use particular
language resources and how they organize their spoken or written texts (e.g., speeches, debates,
arguments, stories). These choices depend on the discipline in which they are being produced, among
other things. Proficient users of language in particular disciplines make language choices (sometimes
unconsciously) about precise vocabulary, about how they shape sentences and paragraphs, and
about how they connect ideas throughout an entire text so that it is cohesive in ways that meet
the expectations of their audiences. These expectations are determined by the nature of the
communicative activity (e.g., talking with someone casually
about a movie, persuading someone in a debate, or writing
a science report); the nature of the relationship between the
language users in the activity (e.g., friend-to-friend, expert-
to-learner); the subject matter and topic (e.g., photosynthesis
in science, the U.S. Civil War in history); and the medium
through which the message is conveyed (e.g., a text message
versus an essay). These register choices, as linguists have
found, vary from discipline to discipline and from situation
from situation. (See chapter 2 of this ELA/ELD Framework
for a discussion of register.) An argumentative text in history
shares some common features with arguments in literature or science, but there are many things that
are different about arguments in each of these disciplines. A major task for teachers is to support
all students to understand how to shift registers and make informed language choices that meet the
expectations of different disciplinary contexts.
In Reading for Understanding, Schoenbach, Greenleaf, and Murphy (2012) discuss their approach
to building knowledge while “increasing... [students’] confidence and competence as independent,
critical readers and writers of academic texts” (234). They describe four overlapping types: knowledge
A major task for teachers
is to support all students
to understand how to shift
registers and make informed
language choices that meet
the expectations of different
disciplinary contexts.Grades 9 to 12 Chapter 7 | 699