Disciplinary Literacies Across Content Areas: Supporting Secondary Reading Through Functional Language Analysis

As the knowledge that students have to learn becomes more specialized and complex in secondary schools, the language that constructs such knowledge also becomes more technical, dense, abstract, and complex, patterning in ways that enable content experts to engage in specialized social and semiotic practices. In order to effectively engage with the texts of disciplinary learning at the secondary level, adolescents need to develop new literacy skills and strategies in each subject area. This paper illuminates some of the ways language is used in secondary science, history, and mathematics and describes an approach to secondary reading, functional language analysis, that offers teachers strategies for focusing on language itself as a way to help students comprehend and critique the advanced texts of secondary schooling. © 2010 International Reading Association, Inc.