In preparation for the academic rigor of higher-education institutions and the high standards of international businesses across the English-speaking globe, students must learn "to use language in more sophisticated ways: arguing, evaluating evidence, analyzing complex texts, and engaging in academic discussions." In order to give students the tools they will need to access academic content and achieve goals they have for using English, educators need to effectively teach these high-order functions of language. However, simply asking students to do such tasks with the language might not achieve this goal. Although language and content teachers may dedicate an allotted amount of time to performing text analysis and generating academic discussions, this does not effectively happen by accident. This article describes how to effectively scaffold academic language in discussions, focusing specifically on the use of writing to help students organize their thoughts, stay focused on the topic, and lower their second or foreign language (L2) speaking anxiety. The article includes examples from a high-beginning English as a second language (ESL) classroom in a university setting.