Dr. Corinne Maxwell-Reid
Faculty of Education
Chinese University of Hong Kong
The language of science education: Technicality and logical reasoning in Hong Kong’s junior secondary EMI classrooms
The field of science education recognizes the central role of language, for students studying through their first language as well as for bilingual education. As Wellington and Osborne (2001: 2) observe for their English-language context, “Every science lesson is a language lesson”. However, what it means to learn the language of science is less well understood (Richardson Bruna, Vann & Perales Escudero 2007). Functional work describes this language in terms of genre and register. Together these two concepts can reveal the learning challenge for students as they move between everyday and scientific knowledge, and as they develop their scientific reasoning (Halliday 1998; Llinares, Morton & Whittaker 2012; Love 2009; Mohan & Slater 2006).
This learning challenge presents difficulties for all students, but particularly for those students studying through a second or foreign language, as is the case in Hong Kong’s English medium of instruction (EMI) classes. Indeed, the EMI classes have been found to lead to reduced teacher-student interaction (Lo & Macaro 2012), which may impact upon students’ opportunities for learning the language of science, and thus of learning science (Halliday 1998; Mohan & Slater 2006). The functional work outlined above provides a way of examining the nature of these difficulties.
This paper reports on a project which examines the role of language in EMI science classes in Hong Kong from a functional perspective. Using classroom observation data along with interviews and questionnaires, it focuses in particular on moments of difficulty for teachers and students. Teachers are often found to be quite skilled in shifting between everyday and scientific knowledge, with strategies for developing taxonomic knowledge and building up technicality. Where they can experience more difficulty is in recognizing the genre requirements of their teaching purpose, and in developing students’ ability to use the logical reasoning of school science. These findings suggest avenues for literacy pedagogical content knowledge, or LPCK (Love 2009), i.e. language education for science teachers.
References
Halliday, M.A.K. 1998. Things and relations: regrammaticising experience as technical
knowledge. In J. R. Martin & R. Veel (eds.). Reading science: critical and functional perspectives on discourses of science, pp. 185-235. London & New York: Routledge.
Llinares, A., T. Morton & R. Whittaker. 2012. The roles of language in CLIL.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lo, Y.Y. & E. Macaro. 2012. The medium of instruction and classroom interaction:
evidence from Hong Kong secondary schools. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 15(1): 29–52.
Love, K. 2009. Literacy pedagogical content knowledge in secondary teacher
education: reflecting on oral language and learning across the disciplines. Language and Education 23: 541-560.
Mohan, B. & T. Slater. 2006. Examining the theory/practice relation in a high school
science register: A functional linguistic perspective. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 5: 302-316.
Richardson Bruna, K., R. Vann & M. Perales Escudero. 2007. What’s language got to
do with it?: A case study of academic language instruction in a high school “English Learner Science” class. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 6: 36-54.
Wellington, J. & J. Osborne. 2001. Language and literacy in science education.
Buckingham: Open University Press.
About the Speaker: Corinne Maxwell-Reid is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Before joining CUHK she worked in Europe,the Middle East, Hong Kong and mainland China. Her research interests includewritten discourse, bilingual education, classroom language learning, and theuse of systemic functional linguistics to investigate these areas.