Academic Vocabulary

I found this article about Academic Vocabulary by Baumann and Graves to be a bit predictable.  In all my education classes, we've always talked about the importance of academic vocabulary.  Every single subject has its own academic vocabulary, and students must master this vocabulary in order to be successful a subject.  The most important thing I took from this article was the importance of not assuming that students already know what is considered to be basic academic vocabulary. Even if it can seem redundant, reviewing these "basic" terms might make the difference for a struggling student.

Much of the article discussed domain specific vocabulary.  In foreign language, the academic language can sometimes be overwhelming for students who struggle with grammatical concepts int English.  So much in learning a foreign language relies on knowing parts of speech and grammatical terms.  I think I too often assume that the students all know what a direct object or a pronoun is, for example.  to make sure everyone is on the same playing field, I will make more of a conscious effort to define academic terms more often instead of assuming students are already familiar with the vocabulary.