oral language development is widely regarded as a key feature of early elementary education, in practice it is often less important in high school, except for students with identified language learning needs. Perhaps this is due to more text-based instruction or to larger class sizes. Whatever the specific reason, there is a noticeable decline in the amount of meaningful discussion that occurs in classrooms after the primary grades. How can students develop critical speaking and listening skills when a large part of their school day involves listening to low-level directions? Importantly, the lack of oral language development has implications for high school educators, who need well-prepared students ready to engage in high levels of academic discourse.
The Common Core ELA standards for grades 9–12 call for teachers to nest speaking and listening within the context of literacy instruction. These performance-based standards include delivering and listening to peer presentations and exchanging information and ideas featured in these performance events. Speaking and listening also extend to a variety of instructional arrangements, especially small-group interactions across content areas. Students are encouraged to collaborate with one another and communicate in formal and informal settings; like in shifts one and two, they should not be bound exclusively to the reading and language arts block and should be integrated across the school day.
Shift Four: Focus on Text-Based Evidence for Argumentation
A fourth shift concerns the development of argumentation skills, which are a predominant feature in the grades 6–12 standards. This is unfamiliar to many English teachers who may have only experienced rhetorical reading and writing as college students themselves. Perhaps they recall formal argumentation in writing, such as Stephen Toulmin’s (1958) model of argumentation.
• Claim: The position being argued; for example, “Our family should get a dog.”
• Grounds: The reasons given for the claim or answers to the question, “What’s the proof?” For instance, “Dogs have been bred for thousands of years to be good companions and to provide security to their owners.”
• Warrant: The more formal reasoning or principle that serves as the underpinning for the claim; this links the claim to the grounds, such as, “Many families choose a dog for a pet for these reasons.”
• Backing: The justification for the warrant; for example, “The Humane Society of the United States says that there are seventy-eight million pet dogs, and 39 percent of all households have at least one dog.”
• Rebuttal: The counterclaim an opponent might assert; for example, “My parents might worry that they will need to handle all the care, but I promise to walk the dog every day.”
• Qualification: The limits to the claim; for example, “I know I will need help in the beginning, because I don’t have a lot of experience with dogs. I know I will need to read more about pet care to get really good at it.”
Toulmin’s (1958) model of argumentation is meant to illustrate that even young children are developmentally capable of laying out a simple argument and supporting it with evidence. The bones of rational thought are completely within the scope of what students in middle childhood can do. Scott Beers and William Nagy (2011) call this discursive literacy and consider this the second step for young adolescent writers after they have mastered the linguistic literacy taught in the elementary grades. Indeed, we regularly teach some aspects already: detecting the differences between fact and opinion, recognizing advertising techniques, and even examining propaganda, editorial cartoons, and letters to the editor. But the discursive literacy needed for more sophisticated writing can be slowed by ineffective instruction. Two elements are missing, however: students are not taught the use of formal argumentation in reading and writing, and they are seldom required to cite evidence from texts to support their claims (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Davidson, 2011; Leithwood, McAdie, Bascia, & Rodrigue, 2006).
These skills can be taught, but they require purposeful instruction. George Hillocks Jr. (2011) suggests introducing argument writing to students through the use of visual crime-solving mysteries that require them to analyze the scene for evidence and use the language of reasoning to make a claim, support the evidence with a warrant, and identify qualifications. Once students have grown more confident with the argument of fact (through crime-solving mysteries), they move to policy arguments (for example, paying students for school attendance). With experience, students are prepared to take on more complex arguments of judgment, addressing issues such as whether “survival of the fittest” is a sociological or biological construct.
In short, the CCSS ELA encourage the purposeful teaching of the elements of argumentation to expand students’ breadth and depth of formal writing. These rhetorical skills are essential as students progress through high school and into the postsecondary world of college and career. Students gain these rhetorical skills through small-group discussions and classroom discourse and as they read and write texts.
Shift Five: Focus on Academic Vocabulary and Language
A final shift in the Common Core standards concerns the development of academic vocabulary and language. As with the other major conceptual changes, this shift’s intent is to foster disciplinary links in order to build learning. This approach acknowledges that vocabulary should not be seen as an isolated list of words but rather as labels that we use as proxies for conceptual understandings. In fact, the language of the standards illuminates this idea. The CCSS note the use of “general academic and domain-specific words and phrases sufficient for reading, writing, speaking, and listening” (NGA & CCSSO, 2010a, p. 25). This focus underscores two key points: (1) academic vocabulary and language entail the use of a broad range of terms (lexical dexterity) and (2) vocabulary development extends beyond teaching decontextualized words (NGA & CCSSO, 2010b).
Much of the research underpinning this view of academic vocabulary and language comes from the work of Isabel Beck, Margaret McKeown, and Linda Kucan (2008), whose familiar three-tier model categorizes words and their instruction.
1. Tier one: These words are used in everyday speech, are used in the vocabulary of most native speakers, and are taught only in the primary grades. However, students who need more language support, such as English learners, will need instruction beyond the first years of schooling. Examples of tier one words include clock, happy, and baby (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002).
2. Tier two: These words (called general academic words and phrases in the CCSS) appear more often in texts than in verbal exchanges. For instance, winnow, boorish, and subsequent are examples of tier two words for high school students. In addition, they are used in many kinds of texts, not just those found within a specific discipline. These words need to be explicitly taught throughout the school years.
3. Tier three: These words (called domain-specific words and phrases in the CCSS) are closely associated with a specific content and also require specific instruction. Examples of such words and phrases in high school English include consonance, omniscient point of view, and stream of consciousness (Marzano & Pickering, 2005).
While teachers often give tier three words and phrases quite a bit of attention, tier two words are more often overlooked. After all, domain-specific words and phrases are closely tied to a discipline and a unit of instruction, and attention is therefore focused on knowing both the definition of the word and its associated concepts. Without instruction with tier two words, students can face more difficulty reading complex texts (NGA & CCSSO, 2010b). Knowing that a character winnowed his choices alerts the reader to his deliberative actions. The character’s subsequent boorish behavior conveys to the reader that the course of action he chose resulted
