Maya’s* pencil moved quickly across her math sheet, jotting down neat and accurate answers at break-neck speed. She was a STEP 1, new-to-English multilingual language learner, and from the moment she walked into class her skills and talents were apparent. She took in everything with bright, inquisitive energy. In no time she was reading simple English sentences. She especially loved math and demonstrated obvious mastery of the concepts explored in class. And she was picking up more and more English every day, using first language to translate and clarify unfamiliar words. Watching her tackle a class worksheet like this math one was like watching a symphony orchestra in full glory … reading, translating, writing, calculating, solving … all of it coming together in intricate interaction to demonstrate learning beautifully.
Until her pencil came to a scratching halt.
I followed her gaze down to the math sheet. It was a word problem. Fractions. Should be a breeze for her, she was light years ahead in this area of math. But her pencil remained frozen on the spot. She simply stared, and then slowly read out loud, “The pizza was eaten by 3 people…” She looked up at me. “I know ‘eat’, but I don’t know ‘was eaten’.”
And that, right there in a single sentence, is the difference between social English (the English we hear every day in conversation) and academic English (the English that we see in textbooks and worksheets).¹
What stumped Maya in that question is a grammar construct called the passive voice. It is almost never used in spoken English (some studies have found we use it in less than 3% of conversational verbs) but it comprises a significant portion of verbs used in academic texts (up to 30%). And when I think about the kind of language I hear every day in schools, those stats check out. I am very likely to hear things in the classroom like “Tru got an A!” or “Ivan crushed the test!” Conversely, I never hear things like “The A was gotten by Tru! The test was crushed by Ivan!”
Or, the pizza was eaten by 3 people …
I remember being fascinated, back in my early ESL training, learning why and when we use the active and passive voice. As my instructor noted, we use the active voice in conversation because it is shorter, direct, easier to say and understand on the fly, and tends to be used when the person doing the action is in the spotlight, as opposed to the actual verb or action being performed. “Tru got an A! Ivan crushed the test!” (Yay Tru! Yay Ivan!). But in academic texts, “who” did something is often less important. Take history texts for example. Do we say “John Smith and his construction crew completed the CN Tower in 1975”… or do we say, “The CN Tower was completed in 1975.” We use the latter, because the important thing in that sentence, historically speaking, is what happened (the completion of the CN Tower) and not who did it (sorry John and all your crew, no yays for you today). History is a prolific user of the passive voice, but science is another rascal in that regard: “The water was heated to 100 degrees.” “DNA was extracted from the cells.” “The current was measured every 10 seconds.” When helping MLLs understand their science work, what I wouldn’t give for the occasional “Mia heated the water. Hong measured the current.” And by the way, when I scanned further down the page on Maya’s math worksheet, the next four word problems all incorporated the passive voice.
This brings me back to a critical point about language acquisition in the classroom: we cannot rely on MLLs to “soak up” the language around them, eventually acquiring fluency through some mysterious unseen process we don’t have anything to do with. How can they “soak up” and learn grammar constructs such as the passive voice when they rarely even hear them in day-to-day conversation? Unless a teacher specifically points it out in a text, what it looks like, and why it’s used…well. MLLs are going to be at a distinct disadvantage for reading comprehension and academic success.
The passive voice is just one aspect of academic language that MLLs may need explicit, intentional support to learn. In my next blog entry, I will explore some resources that help teachers isolate this vocabulary and grammar, along with related teaching strategies. But until then, as a good old fashioned worksheet might phrase it, this blog was written, the words were read, and I hope it was enjoyed by you.
[1] Professor Jim Cummins introduced and explored this distinction through his framework of BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills) and CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency), and it is detailed across his research and many publications on second language acquisition.
*names have been changed
