Increasing calls for equity and accountability in U.S. secondary schools have led to intensified scrutiny of the academic literacy development of English learning (EL) adolescents. This paper discusses some of the challenges that EL secondary students face in achieving the language and literacy skills that will enable them to succeed in their mainstream classes, graduate from high school, and continue their academic careers into college. It presents an instructional approach used to work with students on academic language development and describes the language resources that students were able to take up following instruction. This paper suggests ways that secondary teachers can teach their EL students to use linguistic analysis in order to recognize the expectations of academic writing and produce texts that increasingly incorporate the linguistic features of academic language.