In civic education, the reading of texts in textbooks is crucial, and it is reasonable to think that the students' possibilities to understand the content of the texts play a role in their learning in civics. However, knowledge about the opportunities and difficulties for the students' meaning-making needs to include not only linguistic aspects of the reading but also perspectives of the role of students' prior knowledge when they face texts in civics. This knowledge is important to develop, to be able to work scaffolding in the classroom when civics is taught.
In fact, when L2 students' challenges in civics classrooms are discussed, students' level of prior knowledge and literacy abilities are pointed out as two factors that matter for L2 students' goal achievement in civics (Lai, 2018; Gibson, 2017; Deltac, 2012). In addition, studies that underline the importance of prior knowledge for content learning also emphasize that this knowledge needs to be assessed and activated to support students' content-area learning (Jaffee, 2016; Vacca, Vacca & Mraz, 2014).
Regarding literacy abilities, their role in content-area learning has been studied from various perspectives. For instance, from a form-focused perspective, the language forms and structures in the texts are studied in order to facilitate L2 students with language barriers, such as difficulties with reading comprehension due to complex sentences, dense content, and understanding of the content-specific concepts (Schleppegrell, 2012; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008, 2012). With a form-focused perspective, there is a risk of students using literacy abilities without having a comprehensive understanding of the purpose of a text and how to read it (Moje, 2015).
In order to integrate the form with the content, content-focused activities are suggested by scholars within the field of disciplinary literacy, who claim that the tasks in content area classrooms should be designed to support both language and content area learning (Echevarria, Vogt & Short, 2017; Yoder, Kibler & van Hover, 2016; de Schonewise & Klinger, 2012). For instance, when it comes to reading and learning from texts, L2 students need to activate their reading abilities not only for decoding the texts, but also for decontextualizing and understanding the main concepts and identifying important passages in texts that are often written in an academic language using content-specific terms and abstract concepts. For those students who are in the process of learning an L2 and have not yet received enough opportunities to develop their L1 and L2, the process of learning from the discipline-specific contexts in social studies can be experienced as more challenging.
Against this background, I argue that that the four key components of a) literacy abilities, b) disciplinary literacy abilities, c) prior knowledge, d) content area knowledge, and their interaction with each other are central for supporting L2 students' civics learning and literacy development.
