These include giving and understanding directions, sharing our needs and likes, asking and answering questions, describing the world around us, and more. Language functions are the purposes for which we use language. To begin the discussion on sentence frames, starters and signal words, it is helpful to explore the notion of language functions and their related forms.
Each of these ideas will be explored in more detail in sections that follow. Signal words are those words and phrases that clue in the reader or listener to the purpose of the message. Sentence frames provide a frame of a complete sentence for students, while sentence starters are - as the name implies - a starter for students who must complete the sentence. To help students at all language proficiency levels incorporate higher levels of academic language into their speech and writing, teachers can incorporate the use of sentence frames, sentence starters and signal words with students at a variety of proficiency levels. It includes understanding and being able to produce complex sentences utilizing the key vocabulary of the subject area as well as functional words and phrases that show comparison, sequencing, description, cause and effect, and more.ĭo you use sentence frames, sentence starters and signal words in your classroom? Academic language is much more than just the vocabulary of the subject area being taught. For students to be college- and career-ready, they must gain academic language proficiency.