Academic language pertains to oral, auditory, and visual language that is critical and essential for students to learn effectively in schools. In classrooms teachers are not only responsible for teaching the content of a subject matter, but they are also responsible for teaching the students how to properly express themselves using academic language. This type of language refers to the words we find in schools classrooms, textbooks, test, and assignments. This language does differ from every day social conversations that most students are familiar with, because it is a specialized vocabulary. Using this specialized vocabulary, students are able to effectively and accurately engage in the content area. Academic language is not limited to speaking,…show more content… Cummins is a theorist that has impacted current best educational practices for academic language in early childhood education classrooms.” Cummins addresses how it is just as important that ELL’s learn academic language, but also know how it is more challenging for the students. Cummins has many strategies that can make the oral and written learning of academic language for ELL’s more comprehensible. A teacher using many environmental clues can help the ELL grasp the concept better, which will support cognitive content that is required in a classroom. It is important that teachers encourage and support a child’s native language, this can be done by requesting the student’s parents read to them and discuss their day in their native language. Cummins states (2000), "Conceptual knowledge developed in one language helps to make input in the other language comprehensible." When a child knows a word in his native language, he already understands the meaning for the word; he just needs to know the English label for it. (esl.fis.edu) Cummins has a task difficulty model that teachers can used to judge how hard a task may be for non-native speakers. This model is related to Bloom’s taxonomy, which will help determine if a task is demanding or undemanding. When a teacher has a task for an ELL it should not cause too much frustration, but should boost their confidence and also supply support such as visual aids. Once the student is more comfortable and confident, Cummins believes teachers should guide them toward both cognitive demanding and context-reduced task. These tasks will be more difficult for ELL’s but, as Cummins supports, it is essential to the students becoming