http://www.cal.org/create/events/webcasts/070906.html

Catherine Snow, Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Presented September 6, 2007

The relationship between reading comprehension and vocabulary is well-established, and content area teachers recognize their responsibilities to teach students the words associated with their disciplines--words like photosynthesis, legislative, and dodecahedron. Unfortunately, second language speakers in particular (and students from low-literacy families more generally) often don’t know the all-purpose academic word--words like process, formulate, and structure--that occur with high frequency in both content area textbooks and the definitions of disciplinary words. There is little space in the structure of departmentalized middle and high schools to teach these words, as important as they are.

Presented by: The National Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English Language Learners
A research program funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education