Great Idea: Developing academic vocabulary

What is developing academic vocabulary?

Developing academic vocabulary refers to classroom strategies aiming to enrich the range of vocabulary that learners using EAL have at their disposal. It means ensuring that they go beyond basic and communicative/social vocabulary associated with Bands A and B or Tier 1 vocabulary of English language acquisition towards more formalised, specialised and more abstract vocabulary associated with Bands C to E (Tiers 2 and 3 vocabulary).

The vocabulary tiers classify words by how frequent there are, how complex they are and context in which they are used. Tier 1 words are basic words, used in everyday communication. Tier 2 words a high frequency and multiple meaning words: sophisticated vocabulary often seen in academic settings and texts, transferrable across academic domains, e.g., analyse, maintain, significant, tendency. Finally, Tier 3 is domain-specific vocabulary: technical and specialised jargon, e.g., osmosis, photosynthesis, baroque, teleology.

Often in the classroom, learners at lower bands of English language proficiency have new academic Tier 2 and 3 English vocabulary simplified for them to enable understanding and access to the curriculum, but it is less often that the same learners are supported to master the original academic vocabulary that was simplified for them. All the examples of activities presented in the next section are based on the idea of unpacking (simplifying) the academic language first, and then repacking it: taking the learners back to learn the academic vocabulary they need for school.

Note that this article is about academic vocabulary only, not academic language more broadly; the latter would encompass grammar and other language aspects beyond that of vocabulary, but here our sole focus is vocabulary.

Examples of activities

First, examine the image below, based on Karl Maton’s theory and research which all the activities below are underpinned by.

• Line A, lower on the semantic (vocabulary) scale, represents more basic, social communication vocabulary used in lessons (Tier 1).
• Without support, the academic vocabulary on Line B is typically inaccessible to learners who are newer to English (Tiers 2 and 3). What tends to happen is represented by the three arrows pointing downwards from B (academic) to A (social): teachers simplify (unpack) key vocabulary for learners, helping them understand (either spoken or read vocabulary), but the movement in the opposite direction (to enrich their academic vocabulary in English - repacking) does not occur.
• Line C, however, presents a different approach: while first indeed the more sophisticated vocabulary is unpacked (stage 1), learners are then offered activities to start using the academic vocabulary, now that they grasped the simplified concepts (stage 2). Now again the vocabulary can be unpacked (, but a less simple level than before to repack it again, thus repeating what is termed a semantic wave. This can occur several times in a lesson or over a larger unit.

The three examples of activities below follow these two stages.

Example 1: KS2: History

In a lesson about Rosa Parks and Emily Davison’s lives, all children in the classroom receive a written biography about the two women.

• Stage 1: Unpack: the teacher provides her Band B learners with a list of words from the text that are going to pose difficulties to them and asks them to translate them using bilingual dictionaries. Please note that we are not simplifying here since the translations are academic equivalents of the English words, but the goal is to make the language accessible to learners.
• Stage 2: Repack: Learners now rewrite the stories of Parks and Davison, first in their own language, using their translations of the academic English words. Following this, they translate their texts into English, using only bilingual dictionaries.

Example 2: KS3: Science

This example is based on The Bell Foundation’s resource The boiling point of water and the vocabulary in the flashcards there.

• Stage 1: Unpack: the teacher provides a matching activity where learners match the academic words from the lesson to their simpler alternatives (see the screenshot).
• Stage 2: Repacking: the teacher provides two activities. (1) a gap fill activity where learners replace the words in brackets (the simpler / Tier 1 words) with their academic vocabulary alternative verbs. (2) a substitution table that learners can use to write sentences about the boiling water process, now using academic vocabulary verbs.

Matching activity

Gap fill

Complete the gaps and write a number in the column on the left to sequence the instructions.

No	Picture	What happens
	[1]	We ___________ (put water in) 100ml water into a beaker.
	[2] [3]	We ___________ (put) the beaker on a tripod and gauze.
	[4]	We wanted to  ___________ (learn) out what the boiling point of water is.
	[5]	We  ___________ (started fire) the Bunsen burner using a wooden spill.
	[6]	We turned on the gas.
		We  ___________ (watched) the water until it boiled.
		We  ___________ (made hot) the water using the blue flame on the Bunsen burner.
		We  ___________ (calculated) the temperature with a thermometer.

Put these academic words in the gaps above, changing easy/spoken language to academic/serious language.

Image credits:
[1] New Africa/Shutterstock.com, [2] Mehmet Cetin/Shutterstock.com, [3] Bangyos24/Shutterstock.com [4] Brothers klia/Shutterstock.com, [5] Air Images/Shutterstock.com, [6] Rabbitmindphoto /Shutterstock.com, [7] Etienne du Preez/Shutterstock.com, [8] ggw/Shutterstock.com, [9] Olga_Kostrova/Shutterstock.com

Substitution table

Example 3: KS4: English

The class are studying William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and the lesson focuses on the profile of Lady Macbeth. The worksheet provided to all learners includes words such as pivotal, plot, plagued, commit (suicide) and paranoia.

Stage 1: The teacher has provided a Pelmanism game to pairs of learners using EAL (a memory card game), where they have to find pairs of cards: synonyms of academic and non-academic words, e.g. pivotal = very important, and plagued = troubled. Learners then match these words to sentences provided with gaps in them, e.g. Lady Macbeth was plagued/troubled by guilt.

Stage 2: Now the learners complete a blank template of Lady Macbeth’s profile by using only academic vocabulary they just learned through the game.

How developing academic vocabulary works

When setting up these activities, it will be important to bear in mind the following:

• Translating the academic vocabulary will only work when your learners already understand the concepts in their home language. For instance, if a teacher provides Romanian translations of terms such as byproduct (produs secundar) and chemical energy (energie chimică), these might still be new to them, and will only be of use if they understand these concepts in Romanian.
• Ensure that by the end of the unpacking-to-repacking process, learners are taught not only the academic words or phrases themselves, but that they can write sentences using them, i.e. use them in context.
• If possible for you, it is often beneficial to put speakers of the same language into pairs of groups for the unpacking vocabulary activities so that they can help each other with comprehension.
• Providing a simplified version of an academic word is not a guarantee it will be understood for all multilingual learners. Consider other ways of ensuring comprehension, e.g. images or translation.
• Many formal English words are very similar to their equivalents in other languages where they are not necessarily formal or academic, but will nonetheless be understood by speakers of those languages. For example, the English verb to facilitate comes from the French It is useful to capitalise on these types of similarities.

Top tip: Repetition is key to learning any new vocabulary and this context is no different. Consider activities where learners are encouraged to repeat and/or encounter the same words, e.g. finding card pairs (flashcards), gap fills where learners need to use the same academic words/phrases in different sentences and labelling pictures with more formal vocabulary they just learned.

Why is developing academic vocabulary a Great Idea for learners using EAL?

First of all, many years of research at The University of Oxford have demonstrated that multilingual learners’ academic proficiency in English is crucial to their achievement and thriving in the English school system (Lindorff, Strand and Ma, 2025).

The strategies described above have been inspired by the concept of semantic waves within the wider legitimation code theory developed by Karl Maton (2013). Semantic waves is a framework describing how effective teaching moves between abstract and technical ideas (academic vocabulary: Tiers 2 and 3) and every-day, concrete examples (Tier 1).

There are two dimensions:

Therefore, academic language (the upper part of semantic waves) is more abstract (SG-) and dense (SD+) while less academic language (the lower part of the wave) is more linked to context (SG+) and its meaning less dense (SD-). It is a difference between decontextualised and technical language vs contextualised, everyday vocabulary. This is reminiscent of the classic Cummins Quadrant (1984) where he distinguished between language that is context-embedded and context-reduced as used in the classroom.

Following a semantic wave structure in a lesson or a unit of work enables access to expert knowledge to novice learners. Semantic waves provide different contexts for concepts with numerous concrete examples on offer and connect technical, abstract terminology with simpler meanings. Finally, it helps learners to unpack concepts and then repack them into more sophisticated concepts.

References

Cummins, J. (1984). Bilingualism and special education: Issues in assessment and pedagogy. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

Lindorff, A, Strand S. and Ma, Y. (2025). English as an Additional Language (EAL) and educational achievement in England in 2023: an analysis of the National Pupil Database. Available at: https://www.bell-foundation.org.uk/app/uploads/2025/11/EAL-attainment-2025-Oxford-report.pdf [Accessed 10 Jun 2026].