Developing Oral Science Explanations: Secondary English Learners' Appropriation of Academic Language

• In Event: 29.032 - Micro-Analyses of STEM Teachers' Discursive Practice in Diverse Classrooms: Implications for Teacher Preparation

Abstract

Increasingly, English Learners (ELs) are participating in secondary science classroom activities requiring sophisticated understanding of language, which working with teachers with little or no preparation in working with students struggling to develop language concomitantly with academics. Building on a sociocultural frame that suggests learning occurs in interaction, in this paper we focus on features of functional language use, which are also referred to as language moves (see related work in math by Aguirre-Munoz, 2011) that science teachers use when they want to build up knowledge of important science concepts as they work to construct a scientific explanation. We further examine the relationship between teacher’s strategies and the EL students’ subsequent abilities to provide explanations. We examine how these language moves are used to facilitate the telling and comprehending of the science story by explaining processes and making connections between phenomena.
Data are drawn from a corpus of secondary science classroom data including classroom observations and teacher interviews. We examine the nature of teachers’ strategies for building explanations and making connections, two cognitively complex, language-based activities identified as key to building academic proficiency in science.
We examine language forms, in particular syntactic structures that support making connections and language functions, such as re-voicing and event casting, related to building explanations. Using inter-textuality as a guide, we examine the relationship between teachers’ and students’ subsequent oral and written explanations as they develop during classroom activities. We further examine the relationship between a teacher’s use of language and their language awareness (Andrews, 2007). Our findings suggest that a focus on teachers’ awareness of language in conjunction with their understanding of academic content are key to the developing academic understanding of English learners.
Implications for teacher preparation that supports secondary science teachers’ building of functional language awareness in the service of explaining processes and making connections are drawn.

Authors

• Holly H. Hansen-Thomas, Texas Woman's University

• Juliet Langman, The University of Texas - San Antonio