ENL · Academic Language
Sentence Frame Builder
Tap the word that fits. Scaffolds academic language with Zwiers-style discourse frames — works for ENL, writing, and special ed.
Pick a level
Match to the student’s current WIDA level or writing stage.
How this helps (research)
Sentence frames — also called academic language stems or discourse scaffolds — are the single most widely cited ENL/ELL technique for moving students from everyday language (BICS) to academic language (CALP). Jim Cummins (1979, 2021 update) first framed the BICS/CALP distinction; Jeff Zwiers (2014, Academic Conversations) operationalized it as the discourse stems every ELL teacher now uses.
SIOP (Echevarría, Vogt & Short, 2017) lists sentence frames as a Tier 1 language objective support. The WIDA Can-Do Descriptors (2020) show the progression from “I see ___” at Level 1 to “The evidence suggests that ___” at Level 6. The research is consistent: giving students the structural scaffold lets them focus on content instead of grammar, and they internalize the frame after 5-10 productive uses.
These frames are not just for ELLs. They’re the core move in Sibold & Mooney’s argumentative writing research, Wiggins & McTighe’s Understanding by Design, and in every structured SEL program for students on the autism spectrum who need explicit pragmatic scaffolds.