# data[].attributes.headline
Language Development and Cotent Learning in Science Classroom                      Shang Zhang

# data[].attributes.subject
Language Development and Cotent Learning in Science Classroom                      Shang Zhang

# data[].attributes.body
How does the content (ideational meaning) determine the linguistic resources to be selected/used?

Knowledge structure analysis is used to examine the integration of language development and content knowledge learning. Six basic knowledge structures are used to analyze. The topic of the content knowledge is of the classification of matters, which requires classification structure analysis, determines the linguistic resources to be selected. The written discourses reflect both students’ sophistication of writing academic discourse and understanding of the content knowledge. The written discourses from students are to be analyzed to examine the students’ knowledge, writing skills, and understanding expressed through linguistic devices. In this case, the student’s ability to classify matters and give examples are examined. In their written drafts, the use of lexicon devices such as nominal groups, conjunctions, reference, transitivity, etc. are evidence of their understanding of the content and English language development.

How does the linguistic resource in the hands of the teacher/students contribute or limit meaning construction?

In this case, the linguistic resource in the hands of the teacher/students contribute to the meaning construction. First, when students are introduced to new content knowledges, they might not have the prior knowledge to support their understanding of the new knowledge. When students organize their first drafts, they lack knowledge of certain items and concepts. Then, classroom discussion and the engagement of other written sources are important to the meaning construction. Second, when teacher assess how deep the students understand the content knowledge, the source of the assessment would be the drafts from students. The sophistication of writing and semantic features of the drafts show the degree of the students’ achievements on this topic. Then, the teacher will focus and emphasize on the weaknesses the students have, and contribute to the meaning construction for the students.

Huang, J. (2000). Integration of academic content learning and academic literacy skills development of L2 students: A case study of an ESL science class. In YEARBOOK-NATIONAL READING CONFERENCE (Vol. 49, pp. 392-404).

# data[].attributes.headline
Integration of academic content learning and academic literacy skills in science class-Yunhao HAN 

# data[].attributes.subject
Integration of academic content learning and academic literacy skills in science class-Yunhao HAN 

# data[].attributes.body
In Huang’s research, under the content topic classification of matter in science class, the Mohan’s knowledge structure analysis of students’ writing discourse is expected, for KS approach to identify the macro-organization of texts.

In Huang’s emphasis, writing and content knowledge are co-related to each other, for students who have a better understanding of content knowledge can produce academic writing of high quality.

As for KS approach mentioned in Huang’s research, it reminds me thinking an article wrote by Mohan also focus on KS to offers a way to link wok on academic discourse, also provides me with a perspective that the difference between KS study and genre study. The former one is text-based, starts from the analysis of text, the latter one is more like a situation-based, start from the analysis of situation into KSs.  Thus teachers can work with real content while developing language awareness of academic discourse.

References：
1.Huang, J. (2000). Integration of academic content learning and academic literacy skills development of L2 students: A case study of an ESL science class. In YEARBOOK-NATIONAL READING CONFERENCE (Vol. 49, pp. 392-404).

2.Mohan, B. A. (1989). Knowledge structures and academic discourse. Word, 40(1-2), 99-115.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Importance of Modeling to Teach Registers

# data[].attributes.subject
The Importance of Modeling to Teach Registers

# data[].attributes.body
Madison Flatt

What seemed the most beneficial to the students in the science classroom example was going through multiple drafts and multiple steps in order to solidify their understanding of the content and of the language necessary to discuss the content.  I think too often teachers give a brief definition of a new concept and will often accept less developed definitions from their students.  However, in this classroom by having students create multiple versions of the graphic organizers, the students were able to correct their less accurate definitions, and in the process were able to also develop the academic language that they were using.  Again, this shows that the process of learning academic language and content are one and the same; they should not be separated.  By developing the language necessary to talk about classification, the students are able to understand the differences between organisms better.

I particularly liked the idea of using a graphic organizer to not only help students understand how to classify organisms, but also how it helped them develop the necessary language for the classification genre.  The students were able to improve their definitions and linguistic choices by comparing them to the model text.  This allowed them to analyze their responses for inconsistencies in their definitions and in their language usage.

In order to create accurate definitions, the students had to understand the linguistic resources that allow a writer to create a classification text.  Without understanding the explicit nature of classification texts and the textual resources such as different kinds of conjunctions that connect and distinguish ideas, the students would instead only produce an informational text instead of one that categorizes objects.  The use of graphic organizers is a useful resource for students as it gives them insight into how to talk about classification and how to categorize items.

Huang, J. (2000). Integration of academic content learning and academic literacy skills development of L2 students: A case study of an esl science class. NRC.

# data[].attributes.headline
Content and science learning in science class.------ Yang  Zhang

# data[].attributes.subject
Content and science learning in science class.------ Yang  Zhang

# data[].attributes.body
Different contents would use different linguistic resources to demonstrate ideas. The text of science classroom is required to be in a non-evaluative and neutral mode. According to Huang’s (2000) study, classification writing requires students to apply descriptive and informative linguistic resources to explain concepts.

In Huang’s (2000) research, when the students wrote the first draft following the model text they were able to include many of the scientific elements including “reference”, “transitivity”, “conjunction”, “lexis”, “nominal groups”. After the first draft, students conducted an agreed-upon understanding of the writing standards about language and content for second draft. Later with more scaffolding from the teacher, though draft 1 and draft 3 shared a similar Knowledge Structure, the graphic representations are different. The use of the definition or explanation of terms and the specific examples illustrating those terms have helped make Draft 3 more elaborated in message content. During writing, students gradually get to know the certain features about classification writing, which should be, for example, accurate, objective and clear using formal language.

Huang’s study reminds me of one article that I read before. The study (Slater & Mohan, 2010) is about how there was skillful cooperation between science teacher and ESL teacher based on the science tasks they selected that applied theory to practice and developed meanings in the register of science. From Slater and Mohan’s analysis, based on SFL concept of the meaning potential of register, not only the content teacher’s contribution to language support, but also the contributions to science and language teaching through register development that the ESL teacher provides despite not being a content specialist.

Reference:
Huang, J. (2000). Integration of academic content learning and academic literacy skills development of L2 students: A case study of an ESL science class. In YEARBOOK-NATIONAL READING CONFERENCE (Vol. 49, pp. 392-404).
Slater, T., & Mohan, B. (2010). Cooperation between science teachers and ESL teachers: A register perspective. Theory into Practice, 49(2), 91-98.

# data[].attributes.headline
Language Development for School Success in Science                                              Xiaoxuan Hu

# data[].attributes.subject
Language Development for School Success in Science                                              Xiaoxuan Hu

# data[].attributes.body
How does the content (ideational meaning) determine the linguistic resources to be selected/used?

On one hand, the classroom activities which are content-involved help simulate students’ interactions in comprehending and actually using the language. By understanding the content, active participation could inspire thinking of the role of grammar, usage of vocabulary, cognitive structures, social functions and so forth. On the other, with the directions of the teacher, students can further investigate the linguistic resources through academic writing. From the example presented (Huang, 2000), it is clearly the truth that after learning the classification of matter, the students’ three drafts have seen great progress with the following discussion and analysis. By analyzing knowledge structure, the content leaning through the language and the learning of language itself become more clarified and deepened.

How does the linguistic resource in the hands of the teacher/students contribute or limit meaning construction?

First, under the topic of Classification of Matter, the analysis of students’ written text could help the teachers have a better understanding of how well can they articulate themselves in writing formal texts and expressing the semantic relationship of classification, teachers get the information of what level are the students at and can therefore come up of ways in optimizing the directing strategies (Huang, 2000). Then the teachers can find it practical to introduce related texts, use different kinds of presentations such as graphs and charts in a more explicit way, specify the main semantic relations for constructing KS, pay attention to the key linguistic features concerning certain topic.

References:

Huang, J. (2000). Integration of academic content learning and academic literacy skills development of L2 students: A case study of an ESL science class. In YEARBOOK-NATIONAL READING CONFERENCE (Vol. 49, pp. 392-404).

Halliday, M. A. K., Matthiessen, C., & Halliday, M. (2014). An introduction to functional grammar. Routledge.

# data[].attributes.body
I agree that a teacher's understanding of how language works in the discipline/content he/she is teaching is extremely important if students' use of content specific language is taken into serious consideration. And we know by now that language plays an important role in content learning.

# data[].attributes.body
Could you make connections between Huang and Seah?

# data[].attributes.body
Could you  make connection between Huang's and the idea of multimodal resources in Jakobson & Axelsson (2017)?

# data[].attributes.body
The use of writing process is a good point. However, the process should take both content and use of language into consideration.

# data[].attributes.body
The key is for the teacher to realize what kind of language that the students still need help to develop.

# data[].attributes.body
I like the connection you made among articles.

# data[].attributes.headline
Language Development for School Success in Science - Andrew Gray

# data[].attributes.subject
Language Development for School Success in Science - Andrew Gray

# data[].attributes.body
Comprehension of science literature and writing about science as a subject matter requires a knowledge of linguistic features consistent with informative texts and instruction specific to the discipline. The lexiogrammar of science is specific and provides the linguistic features necessary to 1. successfully present material as an instructor 2. efficiently comprehend and store knowledge as a student. Huang (2000) emphasizes the need for specific linguistic features consistent with subject matters that rely heavily on taxonomic structure. The text elaborates on the need for greater understanding of definition, as well as the ability for students to compose and revise. Huang (2000) seems to push two main points: 1. Student understanding of definition principles (even in lexically simple, miniamal-clause sentences) is supported by teacher scaffolding as well as academically rich text resources (again aligning with the importance of student exposure to reading in general). 2. Students will gain success in content-rich descriptions when given the opportunity to see model texts, write, and revise. These conclusions are also in line with those made by O'Hallaron, Palincsar, and Schleppegrell (2015), emphasizing the importance of students having a relationship with the text and instruction.

Instructors, to an extent, pave the way for student success in this area. One cannot make the assumption that all instructors have the necessary knowledge to combine concepts of systemic functional linguistics and the science discipline, thus it is imperative that science instructors seeking to instill the language of science in their students also have a firm foundation in the basics of metafunction.

O'Hallaron, C., Palincsar, A., & Schleppegrell, M. (2015). Reading science: Using systemic functional linguistics to support critical language awareness. Linguistics and Education, 32, 55-67. doi:10.1016/j.linged.2015.02.002

# data[].attributes.body
Just like Trevor mentions above, there are three main types of questions that were being asked of the students by the teacher. These three types of questions were where the students felt comfortable, thus seemed to be willing to discuss and use language more freely and openly. However, when students were pushed to "reference relevant concepts or principles, explain a method used,  or justify" (Huang 44), then they simply shut down. Since students are able to speak freely about the content that they are learning, this is the foundation that is needed to be built on as the teacher. The teacher can see that this is where a strength lies for the students and this is their comfort zone, thus allowing the teacher to push them to think deeper and at a higher level. However, in order for them to truly begin thinking at a deep level, there has to be a level of discourse happening, which is modeled through the teacher and the opportunities that the students have to "teach the class".

The linguistic resource that the teacher has allows for the teacher to push students to the next level because it allows for more purposeful planning. When a teacher is aware of what is needed and where they want their students to go, they are able to better create an environment where students can have the discussions and are able to truly be able to begin to dive into the next level of understanding the context through language.

Wiley, A., & McKernan, J. (2017;2016;). Examining the impact of explicit language instruction in writer workshop on ELL student writing. The New Educator, 13(2), 160-10. doi:10.1080/1547688X.2016.1144122

# data[].attributes.headline
Content and Language in Science Class- Huifang Wang   

# data[].attributes.subject
Content and Language in Science Class- Huifang Wang   

# data[].attributes.body
As content-based task pedagogy mentioned, content and language are never separated. Each discipline has their own ways to use language to interpret the content or knowledge in their own terms, genres, and registers, etc.. As the difficulty of the concepts in certain discipline increases, the language that construes those concepts also becomes more complex and distanced from spoken language. For instance, students in primary schools are always asked to recount stories, their life experience, or life events, and so forth. However, high school students in science classroom are taught to classify, explain, or compare and contrast the key concepts or theories in expository, explanation, argument genre, or information report etc.. The “content” in school contexts is presented and assessed through language, Systemic functional linguistics perspectives told that students should learn to use language in new ways (different grammatical choices, appropriate genre and register constructions, particular goals) with the assistance of content-area teachers who can give them explicit linguistic instruction and create the meaningful, authentic, and purposeful context.

Seah investigated the elementary teachers’ perception of language issues in science classroom found that teachers acknowledged that scientific language is different from the language used in other disciplines. They viewed language is a significant barrier to the learning of science. The awareness promoted teachers to adopt many approaches in systemic level and classroom level to address students learning difficulties in language. However, teachers exhibited limited awareness of the importance of knowing about the distinctive grammatical and structural features of scientific language as compared to other disciplines and  the functions of these language features in constructing and arguing scientific propositions and knowledge claims. The limitation made the approaches the teachers cited were confined to a basic set of  developing generalizable literacy skills that can be applied across different content areas, not pertinent to science.

Huang’s successful case study in a specific science classroom revealed that not only teachers functional linguistics awareness, but also their linguistic skills, deliberate classroom instruction, interactive, meaningful and purposeful context construction all play key roles to enhance students’ content-area language development.

References:
Huang, J. (2000). Integration of Academic Content Learning and Academic Literacy Skills Development of L2 Students: A Case Study of an ESL Science Class. NRC (National Reading Conference) Year Book, 49, 392–400.

Seah, L. H. (2016). Elementary Teachers’ Perception of Language Issues in Science Classrooms. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 14(6), 1059–1078. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-015-9648-z

# data[].attributes.headline
Content and Language Learning in Science Class-Lauren Wolff

# data[].attributes.subject
Content and Language Learning in Science Class-Lauren Wolff

# data[].attributes.body
Writing within the scientific field requires a specific register to effectively convey meaning. Scientific writing relies on the ability to use language that explains concepts using technical terms and provides examples to demonstrate those concepts to a distant, impersonal audience. As Huang (2000b) articulates, "the more accurately a student can...provide examples or non-examples, the better conceptual knowledge the student has" (p. 397), further emphasizing that scientific writing must utilize concise and specific examples using a technical lexicon.

Jakobson & Axelsson (2017) discuss that the language of science includes "various multimodal resources, such as written and spoken

language, still and moving images, gestures and physical artifacts" so students need to learn not only the written language of science, but also how to connect those to the various other media used in presenting information. In their study, they found that if the teacher specifically talked about the lexical resources that she was looking for in the students' responses such as asking for "processes" when describing a scientific phenomenon, students improved in their meaning construction because they understood what depth in the content she was looking for. She gave several examples of what "processes" would look like so they had a basis for language use in the scientific field.

Jakobson, Britt, & Axelsson, Monica. (2017). Building a Web in Science Instruction: Using

Multiple Resources in a Swedish Multilingual Middle School Class. Language and Education, 31(6), 479-494.

# data[].attributes.headline
Developing Knowledge Structures in the Math classroom-Trevor N.

# data[].attributes.subject
Developing Knowledge Structures in the Math classroom-Trevor N.

# data[].attributes.body
IIn the Math classroom, many of the knowledge structures the students used were description, sequence, and choice.  Although these three structures were used, the teacher pushed the students to think deeper about the problem: reference relevant concepts, explain method used, or justify a decision for method or solution chosen (Huang, Normandia, & Greer, 2005, p. 44).  However, the students struggled to discuss this knowledge at this level; the teacher had to intervene to assist the students to reference, explain or justify.

This limitation is the starting point for the students (ZPD) and where the teacher needs to explicitly teach.  Because the class was considered an “advanced” math course for the students, pre-calculus, the difficulty the students faced is understandable.  However, as concepts become difficult, students’ learning increased; as a result, “the language that construes those concepts also become more complex…from ordinary use of language” (Schleppegrell, 2004, p. 155).  The way students expanded on their academic language discourse was the teacher placed them as the teacher (Huang, Normandia, & Greer, p. 45).  Many times the teacher intervened to push for higher-level knowledge structure.  Scaffolding in this context is what Aguirre-Munoz et. al. (2008) promotes on the benefits from rigorous instruction and efficient evaluation.  To achieve this, teachers need beneficial professional development training to support the linguistic needs.  As seen in the math classroom, this was, as Schleppegrell expresses, “visible pedagogy;” the teacher design her instruction to systematically integrate “math thinking” and “math talking” at all levels of knowledge structures.  Ultimately, the teacher became a mathematician and a mentor to structure how to talk math in an academic context.

Aguirre-Muñoz, Z., Park, J., Amabisca, A., & Boscardin, C. K. (2008). Developing teacher capacity for serving ELLs' writing instructional needs: A case for systemic functional linguistics. Bilingual Research Journal, 31(1), 295-322. Retrieved from https://unco.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.unco.idm.oclc.org/docview/222027000?accountid=12832

# data[].attributes.headline
Language Development and Knowledge Construction in the Science Classroom - Lauren Johnson

# data[].attributes.subject
Language Development and Knowledge Construction in the Science Classroom - Lauren Johnson

# data[].attributes.body
For the science classroom, the text must maintain a neutral, non-evaluative mode that provides facts accepted as true in the scientific community. Texts are intended to inform others. The texts expected of students in the science classroom for this study use the description category of Mohan’s Knowledge Framework in order to demonstrate that students understand the classification category of the framework. As the assignment objectives require students to describe the “Classification of Matter” (Huang, 2000b, p. 395), the content of the text calls for students to use informative, descriptive linguistic resources typical of science classrooms to accomplish such a classification.

In the first draft provided as an example in the article, the student was able to include many of the desired discourse elements for this genre of writing including “reference”, “transitivity”, “conjunction”, “lexis: classification”, and “nominal groups”. However, with the instructor’s scaffolding through the use of models of the appropriate text genre and an exploration of problems and goals for the next draft, students were able to take part in knowledge construction on the content topic as the developed linguistic tools for understanding and expressing this knowledge before writing their next draft.

Huang’s study includes the type of mapping that Pandey (2012) found to be essential in the process-based writing approach and goes further to ensure that the content and construction of knowledge remain a part of the science classroom writing process instead of simply focusing on automaticity through formulated genre-focused structure. The collaborative and constructive nature of the study mirrors Matthiessen’s socio-semiotic process as discussed in Xuan’s study of ESL writing (2017). Xuan’s findings on students’ lack of awareness in regard to the tenor of their writing is also relevant as it would be addressed through this framework for genre-based writing as students begin to see through model texts the tenor that authors of scientific texts maintain with their readers.

As Huang’s article emphasizes, writing in the science classroom requires attention to the genre of the text as well as the process of writing. Marrying these two techniques in a framework of knowledge construction will give students an opportunity to learn science as the learn to write about science, which is an invaluable skill for their future academic careers as they will be expected to constantly demonstrate their knowledge of scientific concepts through writing and will be judged against a subject-specific textual context.

Pandey, A. (2012). Rethinking process-based writing approaches in the ESOL middle school classroom: Developing linguistic fluency via hybrid pedagogies. TESOL Journal, 3(4), 659-697. 10.1002/tesj.39 Retrieved from https://unco.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.unco.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=83585331&site=ehost-live

Xuan, W.W. (2017). An exploratory study of ESL writing by junior secondary students in china: Text type, register and textual features. Functional Linguistics, 4(1), 1-19. //dx.doi.org.unco.idm.oclc.org/10.1186/s40554-016-0038-9 Retrieved from https://unco.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.unco.idm.oclc.org/docview/1862236431?accountid=12832