This Lancaster Literacy Research Centre event will be a talk from Oksana Afitska, titles Use of Academic Language in Primary Classrooms: Functions, Patterns and Learning Outcomes.

Abstract:

Proficient use of subject-specific and academic language is largely not compulsory in the context of England’s primary classrooms, however well-developed competency in academic language and discipline-specific discourse becomes essential for successful acquisition of key areas of the curriculum at secondary level. In this presentation, I will draw on classroom discourse data to identify patterns of language use by teachers and learners in primary classrooms by looking at academic language functions, academic and subject-specific vocabulary (and grammar) and complexity of input and output language data.

Event Schedule:

12:00 - Welcomes & introductions (please enter the meeting with your 'real' name as your display name, and your camera switched on, to allow us to all put faces to each others' names)

12:05 - Presentation from Oksana Afitska (please turn your camera off and mute your microphone during the presentation)

12:40 - Discussion (please use the raise hand feature on Teams to indicate you would like to have a turn speaking and once asked to speak by an event facilitator, please un-mute your microphone and turn your camera on)

Presenter bio:

Dr. Oksana Afitska is Lecturer in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) at Lancaster University, UK. Her primary research interest lies it the field of educational linguistics, with specific focus on language teaching methods, formative language assessment and development of language-accommodated teaching materials. Her current research investigates educational and linguistic challenges that non-native speakers of English face in mainstream schools in the UK. She has extensive experience in conducting classroom-based, cross-disciplinary and intervention, research.