CorsonThis article examines the learning and use of academic English words by students who differ socioculturally. It argues that the Graeco-Latin vocabulary of English, which dominates the language's academic vocabulary, offers various levels of potential difficulty for students from different class, cultural, or linguistic social factions. It presents the evidence for this conclusion by integrating work from discursive psychology, the sociology of language, psycholinguistics, and applied linguistics, and by attempting a comprehensive review of the published literature on its topic. The article concludes by inferring some changes to practices in L1 and L2 academic English education.In its review of relevant literature, this article links first language (L1) vocabulary acquisition research with research on second language (L2) learning and use. My basic argument is that control of the Graeco-Latin academic vocabulary of English is essential to academic success; yet, many learners from some sociocultural backgrounds do not get ready access to this vocabulary outside school, making its use inside schools doubly difficult. I

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In high-risk sites like Ontario, traditional forms of liberal education are being replaced by policies mandating teaching and learning activities that are aimed at serving the utilitarian needs of a corporate and globalized market place. This means that preparation for the needs of employers is rapidly replacing the liberal studies preparation that students conventionally received. This paper is a case study of Ontario's advance along this course.Liberal conceptions of education had their origins in the formal preparation for society that leisured young gentlemen received in the 19th and early 20th centuries. When compulsory education was extended to the masses in the 19th century, school systems looked to the formal education already received by the leisured classes for suitable curriculum models. Accordingly, in its original form, a liberal education was not connected with any particular life destination or with preparation for work of any definite kind. Instead, its graduates were shaped by rich contacts with the classics, with the other humanities, and with the natural sciences, so they could take their proper place as 'agreeable' people in polite society. To give some structure to a liberal curriculum, certain 'forms of knowledge and experience' were identified by theorists in the mid-20th century. The version from the British philosopher Paul Hirst (1974) was probably the one most widely cited. His schema covered approximately the physical sciences, logic and mathematics, the human sciences, ethics, aesthetics, religion and philosophy.My argument here is that formal liberal education, encompassing forms of knowledge like these, has almost run its historical course. It is being replaced, in high-risk sites like Ontario, by policies mandating teaching and learning activities that are aimed at serving the utilitarian needs of a corporate and globalized market place. Preparation for the facile needs of employers is rapidly replacing the conventional liberal preparation of initiating students into worthwhile forms of life. This paper presents a case study of Ontario's alarming advances along this course.