The words that ELL/English B students have most difficulty with are the academic, non-subject-specific words that occur across all disciplines; words like duration, indicate, similarity, furthermore, rate, etc. These words cause problems for two reasons:
- subject teachers generally assume that their students know these words and seldom teach them explicitly;
- most of the words are abstract, which makes them much more difficult to learn.
It will be useful to make explicit the meanings of some of the semi-technical vocabulary that reoccur in your subject. Without a strong academic vocabulary students will struggle to achieve success in your class.