ABSTRACT

Recently a novel instrument – the Core Academic Language Instrument (CALS-I) – aimed at testing a constellation of school-relevant English language skills was developed and validated for use in the United States (Uccelli, Barr, Dobbs, Galloway, Meneses and Sánchez, 2015. Core Academic Language Skills: An expanded operational construct and a novel instrument to chart school-relevant language proficiency in preadolescent and adolescent learners. Applied Psycholinguistics 36: 1077–1109). The unitary construct tested by the CALS-I was dubbed Core Academic Language Skills (CALS) and it aimed to identify and describe a set of skills that comprise academic language proficiency of high utility across curricular content areas. This study piloted a version of the CALS-I that was slightly modified for use in South Africa targeting specifically middle-school learners. The results of this study reveal that the CALS construct functions almost identically to the United States sample when tested in South Africa, and this provides strong evidence for the fundamental and cross-cutting nature of these pedagogically relevant skills.

摘要

最近，一种新的工具——核心学术语言工具（CALS-I）——旨在测试一系列与学校相关的英语语言技能被开发并验证在美国使用（Uccelli、Barr、Dobbs、Galloway、Meneses 和 Sánchez , 2015. 核心学术语言技能：一种扩展的操作结构和一种新颖的工具来绘制青春期前和青少年学习者与学校相关的语言能力。应用心理语言学36：1077-1109）。由 CALS-I 测试的单一结构被称为核心学术语言技能 (CALS)，它旨在识别和描述一组技能，这些技能包括跨课程内容领域的高实用性学术语言能力。本研究试行了一个稍作修改的 CALS-I 版本，用于在南非专门针对中学学习者。这项研究的结果表明，在南非进行测试时，CALS 结构的功能与美国样本几乎相同，这为这些教学相关技能的基本和跨领域性质提供了强有力的证据。