The language of different types of explanations in junior high school Science texts

Unsworth, L. (2001). Evaluating the language of different types of explanations in junior high school science texts. International Journal of Science Education, 23(6), pp. 585-609. doi:10.1080/09500690010006473

Background

The quality of the writing in Science textbooks in terms of supporting students in shifting their language into the more abstract written mode common in Science is a crucial factor in enhancing Science teaching.

Aims

The aim of the research is to identify the appropriateness of explanatory texts students encounter in Science for ‘apprenticing’ students into the language of scientific English.

Sample

The author draws on material derived from an extensive study in which a large sample of texts was analysed.

Method

The data were analysed at three levels:

Genre theory: to identify the functional stages in the complete text of the explanation.
Use of conjunctions: to understand how the reasoning in the explanation is achieved through the use of temporal and causal conjunctions e.g. ‘when’ and ‘because’.
Nominalisation: to examine the extent to which explanations use nouns derived from verbs e.g. ‘The rapid movement of the particles … ’ instead of ‘The particles moved rapidly …’.

Findings

Despite the very clear differences of textual resources in the construction of the examples, all of the texts met the needs of some students for at least some of the purposes for which they were reading.
The analyses discussed indicate that effective writing of explanations in school Science books is identifiable and can be specified in terms of the genre stages, use of conjunctions and nominalisation.

Implications

The author states that the use of basic linguistic descriptions to analyse the texts could be made more generally accessible to Science teachers through teacher preparation and professional development activities. The author also suggests that Science teachers can support their students to use appropriate language features of Science through scaffolding strategies to explicitly address the language. The author also suggests that further interdisciplinary research may lead to a practical agenda for the reform of Science explanations in school texts as resources for apprenticing students to the discourse forms of scientific English.

Original article retrieved from Taylor & Francis.