Language processes are central to how students engage with disciplinary content and demonstrate what they know and can do.

In disciplinary learning, students are expected to use language in specific ways to engage with content, develop ideas, and communicate their understanding. Student work often serves as a primary source of evidence for interpreting learning, and the strength of that evidence depends, in part, on how students use language within a task.

This page includes resources design to make language processes explicit and to support the examination of how tasks elicit and provide evidence of those processes in student work.

The Core Idea

Learning in disciplinary contexts involves both cognitive processes and the language used within those disciplines. The framework makes language processes explicit and provides a consistent way to identify and define the language demands of disciplinary learning.

The Language Processes Framework

The Language Processes Framework defines the range of language processes that may be required in standards and used in assessments and instructional tasks across disciplinary areas.

Download the Language Processes Framework (PDF)

Task Audit Tool

The Language Processes Task Audit Tool is a companion resource for examining how tasks elict language processes and the extent to which student work provides evidence of those processes.

Download the Language Processes Task Audit Tool (PDF)

It supports analysis of task design, including how language processes are elicited, how students are expected to produce language, and where evidence of those processes is present or limited in student work.

Additional resources and examples related to language processes in disciplinary learning will be added here over time.

Working Together

This work can be extended through collaboration with educator teams, schools, and organizations seeking to strengthen instructional design and support clearer evidence of how students use language to engage with content and communicate what they know and can do.

I work with teams to apply these ideas in specific contexts, including task design, professional learning, and system-level instructional improvement.

If you’re interested in this work, you can reach me at team@edblogcast.com.