LINGUISTICALLY RESPONSIVE SCIENCE TEACHING

 Julie Shaw
Eastern University
U.S.A.

Linguistic Considerations for ESL Students
Demands from NSES
Teaching Strategies
Conclusion
Endnotes
References

Many reports from the late 1980s and early 1990s showed that the science education in the United States has been “less than adequate” (Buxton, 1998, p. 343), where the main methods of instruction are lectures, memorization, demonstration and assessment through objective tests “with little or no opportunity to engage directly in the kind of open-ended inquiry and explanation that is representative of the true nature of science” (Buxton, p. 343).  This criticism eventually resulted in a major overhaul of the National Science Education Standards (NSES) in 1996.  Successful teaching to the NSES is complicated in science classrooms containing speakers of other languages.  (Hereafter I will refer to this population as ESL--English as a Second Language--students.)  Teaching to the new standards especially in this linguistically diverse situation requires new teaching approaches.  This paper presents two important pedagogical and linguistic considerations to help science teachers of ESL students, drawn upon theories of second language acquisition and my personal tutoring/observation1.  Also presented will be specific teaching strategies that can be used to support ESL students in their science classrooms.  [paragraph 1]

My observation took place in a suburban high school outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for the duration of eight weeks while tutoring three 10th grade ESL students.  These students were all integrated into mainstream science classrooms but were placed in the lowest ability-level biology classes regardless of their scientific aptitude. I tutored two hours a week with a Puerto Rican female student and a Korean male student respectively and only one hour a week with a Chinese male student.  The Puerto Rican student was probably the most English proficient of the group, having been in the United States for over a year.  The Korean student who was in the United States for less than two months was most limited in his English language skills.  The Chinese student had been in the country for about one year and was functional in English at a level in between the aforementioned students.  [paragraph 2]

These ESL students received one class period a day to attend a “special” ESL study hall.  A French teacher, who was expected to support all the students in this class of about 10 students, supervised this study hall.  This was disconcerting to me because, as I spent more time in this class, it became apparently impossible for the ESL study hall teacher to provide the students with the kind of attention and instruction that they would need to succeed in school.  [paragraph 3]

Linguistic Considerations for ESL Students

In order to understand linguistic issues involving ESL students, let me introduce a few important principles in second language learning.  Much of the research done surrounding second language acquisition (SLA) regarding language learning in content classrooms holds the view that SLA takes place more along the lines of a social-constructivist framework where “a child learns a second language by using the semantics of the native language as a foundation” (Jaipal, 2001, p. 4).  This view of second language acquisition can be successfully utilized in a science classroom especially where an ESL student's first language is of a Greco-Latin origin.  This allows students to naturally make meaning from scientific words (e.g. "Carnivore" must have something to do with meat if you know that the Spanish word carne means meat) considering that the “academic language of texts in English depends heavily on Greco-Latin words…” (Cummins, 2002, online).  [paragraph 4]

The theory of second language learning in content area is also supported by “Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, in which [language] learning is conceptualized as a mediated process between experts and novices” (Eyring, 2001, p. 338) and “provides us with a very credible scenario for how experiences external to the learner become internalized” (Hawkins, 2001, p. 374).  Thus, the content area teacher must be cognizant of how to successfully mediate content knowledge and language instruction effectively to ESL students.  Unfortunately, “regular content area teachers in America’s classrooms are ill prepared to meet the needs of their English language learners, having received little to no pre-service or in-service education in effective methods” (Newman & Nyikos, 1999, online) to mediate language and content.  [paragraph 5]

Discussion of linguistic considerations for ESL students would not be complete without mentioning the differences between basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS) and cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) and its implications to the content area teacher.  Significant research has shown that “BICS is characterized by social communication skills which are context embedded and cognitively undemanding” (Hawkins, 2001, p. 376) and the language of the "playground" is usually attained in about two years of second language instruction.  CALP, on the other hand, takes students an average of 5-7 years to master, requiring language skills that will aid in the “successful participation in content area classrooms…[where] instruction using language...is context reduced and cognitively demanding” (Hawkins, 2001, p. 376).  Content area teachers interested in helping their ESL students achieve a higher CALP should consider following the strategies noted below, which will help create “instruction [that is] cognitively challenging...require students to use higher-order thinking abilities …[and] integrate language instruction [in content classrooms] so that students acquire the specific language registers [and] develop critical language awareness” (Cummins, 2002, online).  [paragraph 6]

Following is an overview of specific research regarding the language of science.  All of us may have, at one point or another, been in a situation where we noticed that scientific language is different than regular conversational English.  We see and hear this when we visit the doctor, read labels on medications and watch TV commercials for prescription drugs.  These real life encounters with the language of science make it imperative that we make "science accessible to all,” as recommended by the NSES, and that we help our students become comfortable with the language of science.  [paragraph 7]

The first way in which scientific language is different from everyday language is that our everyday conversations “are constructed around …[language] in the form of a grammatical unit, a clause consisting of a nominal group (noun), verbal group (verb), adjectives, adverbs or prepositions and conjunctions” (Jaipal, 2001, p. 5).  The language of science is grammatically very different from this and “characterized by an elaborated grammatical pattern that consists of nominal groups connected by a verbal group”(Jaipal, p. 5).  Below is an example of everyday language and scientific language presented with the same meaning:  

Everyday Language:  

The girl swam very fast	so	she was tired.
Conjunction	clause	Clause

Scientific Language:   

The fast swim of the girl across the pool	resulted in	tiredness.
Nominal group	verbal group	nominal group

This elaborated pattern of grammar is one that must be explicitly taught to our ESL students if they are to succeed in our science classrooms.  Secondly, students are also presented with language that is a result of “nominalization – that is turning verbs and adjectives into nouns”  (p. 6).  For example, nominalization would change "move" to "motion," "adapt" to "adaptation," and "circulate" to "circulation."  Thirdly, scientific language is difficult for ESL students in that it relies heavily on “a discourse of reasoning such as drawing conclusions from observations, thesis-evidence-conclusion, compare/contrast, cause/effect and problem/solution” (p. 6) where language is used in many unfamiliar ways to express and create meaning.  [paragraph 8]

Demands from NSES

Science instruction is different from language instruction.  “The typical science teacher has tended to focus on teaching vast quantities of knowledge.  The typical language specialist has largely taught basic interpersonal communication skills to beginning and intermediate students of English and traditional language arts skills” (Buxton, 1998, p. 342).  The typical teaching practice outlined above is still very much a reality in science and ESL classrooms, and this clear gap between science teaching and language instruction for ESL students need to be mediated.  The 1996 NSE standards calls for improvement in the accessibility of science education for all American students, including ESL students.  [paragraph 9]

“The National Science Education Standards present a vision of a scientifically literate populace...the intent of the Standards can be expressed in a single phrase: Science standards for all students" (NRC, 1996, p. 2).  The realistic understanding of today's diverse student population and a commitment to science education for all students require of science teachers a firm belief that all students can learn science.  This standard, unfortunately, has not been applied to those entering the U.S. educational system from other countries.  These students are often integrated into mainstream classrooms far too early despite the well-established theory that academic language skills take longer to be acquired, approximately 5-7 years (Cummins, 2002).  Another “common practice among schools with large linguistically diverse populations” (Buxton, 1998, p. 343) is to group them in low ability classes.  This is often done regardless of the students’ ability in the content area.  This practice is still the norm at the small suburban high school where I have had the opportunity to tutor.  I feel that one of the students I have been working with--the Korean boy who moved to the United States three months ago--presents a high scientific aptitude but has been put into the lowest biology class because of his limited abilities in English.  This means that he will receive no biology lab and thus will receive far less hands-on opportunities to use, talk, and write science.  I worry that this will create either frustration or boredom for this student as he progresses through this school system.  [paragraph 10]

The second new goal of NSES is to “select science content and adapt and design curricula to meet the interests, knowledge, understanding, abilities, and experiences of students” (NRC, 1996).  Such a goal calls on teachers to become responsive to all students including English language learners (ELL's), but training is greatly lacking for science teachers on specific strategies of how to adapt lessons for the ESL students. This is the case in my personal observations.  There was a complete lack of adaptation of materials for this group of students I tutored (except in the area of assessment where ESL students were given extra time to complete tests and could use English – native language dictionaries).  The focus of instruction for the students I tutored centered on giving selected readings and questions as homework and reviewing the answers to questions during class time with a bit of new lecture information peppered throughout the class period.  The lack of adaptation was also seen through the evaluation of the reading levels of the assignments given by the biology teacher, which consistently scored at a 12th grade level on the SMOG reading scale2.  (The science text for the ‘middle track’ biology class ranked a 10th grade level with the SMOG formula).  [paragraph 11]

Thirdly, the new NSES standards expect;

[T]eachers of science [to] guide and facilitate learning. In doing this, teachers focus and support inquiries while interacting with students, orchestrate discourse among students about scientific ideas, challenge students to accept and share responsibility for their own learning, recognize and respond to student diversity and encourage all students to participate fully in science learning...students with limited English ability might be encouraged to use their own language as well as English and to use forms of presenting data such as pictures and graphs that require less language proficiency.  (NRC, 1996)

This is the strongest and most detailed information that the NSES references with regard to specific instructional strategies for ESL students.   I feel as Buxton (1998)  states in her work that “The [NSES] standards fail to provide teachers with the tools necessary to overcome these shortcomings” (p. 349) for ESL and ELL students.  While it is commendable that the NSES presents this recommendation that students are given the opportunity to speak and write in their native language, teachers also need to recognize the difficulties that may be encountered if students are allowed to write/respond in this native language. First, there is a lack of bilingual teachers to assess or monitor students responding in their native language.  Secondly, students may "find that they do not have the necessary vocabulary in their first language to write or talk about these [scientific] concepts successfully” (Buxton, 1999, p. 342).  [paragraph 12]

Teaching Strategies

Many ESL students are able to perform well in the use of conversational English, appearing to have a firm understanding of the English language; in reality, however, many of these students are not yet proficient in academic English and struggle because the system has failed to supply them with adequate learning strategies to succeed in our classrooms, especially in science.  First I will outline simple changes that can be implemented at the administrative level to help teachers be better prepared to deal with the linguistically diverse population within a school.  Following that, several strategies will be presented as possible helps to science teachers in the classroom.  [paragraph 13]

The first thing any administration can do to improve educational practices for ESL students in the classroom is to promote collaboration between content area teachers (mainly science) and ESL or language specialists within the school.  As Vine (1997) points out in her research, many “specialist ESL classes sometimes focus more on the social, conversational, communicative aspects of English language development rather than academic ones” (p. 8).  Buxton (1998) argues that “one of the reasons that the science classroom is not traditionally used as such a [language] resource is the lack of communication between science teachers and language specialists” (p. 342).  There is a real need for more collaboration between content area teachers and ESL specialists.  [paragraph 14]

A study conducted by the National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning discovered that four schools noted as outstanding in their instructional programs for ESL students shared a common key factor: “their language acquisition and development programs for LEP [limited English proficiency] students support, and are coordinated with, the exemplary science and mathematics programs” (Minicucci, 1996, online).  The author noted that the reform towards success began by giving teachers ample opportunities for collaboration, staff development, and time for planning lessons and, in one case, an extra class period was added to the schedule for teachers to meet with students on a small group basis.  This type of collaboration was non-existent over the eight weeks I was tutoring these three students.  I worked solely with the ESL study hall teacher and the students.  I attempted to talk further with the science teacher of my tutees in hopes of gaining some background knowledge or information about areas to focus on while working with these students.  Needless to say, I did not get any productive feedback from this teacher.  Only in the last week of my tutoring did the Puerto Rican girl explain to me that the ESL teacher was going to talk to the science teacher about her performance on objective tests and see if there would be opportunities for optional testing methods.  It is a shame that this type of collaboration comes into play more as an intervention from failing a student than as a part of the normal process within this school.  [paragraph 15]

Any science teacher, if given ample planning time and staff development opportunities, can easily implement some additional linguistically responsive teaching strategies.  The first of these is to perform an honest assessment of the reading materials used in the science classroom.  As noted earlier, the reading level of the materials given to the students I tutored ranked the 12th and 13th grade level through the use of the SMOG formula.  To give ESL/ELL students a chance to learn the material Noguchi (1998) suggests "easifying’" text which means that teachers use “various devices…to guide the reader through the text without making drastic changes to the content or linguistic form of the text...” (p. 3).  In this strategy students will be instructed to identify the purpose, audience, information and language features of each text presented and then they will determine which reading strategies (e.g. attack a compare-contrast text with use of Venn diagrams) to pull out of their bag of tricks to help themselves.  In my personal experience this approach helped me more than the students I was tutoring, since they were not equipped with reading strategies to understand and make meaning from their readings.  I used the Noguchi (1998) method to help me decide which reading strategies were most appropriate to present to these students.  [paragraph 16]

A second way to make science content more accessible to ESL students is to modify our language.  For science teachers it is only natural to talk in the language of science with our elaborated grammatical formats and all too familiar discourse styles of comparing and contrasting, enumerating and so on.  We are often not aware that we are talking or choosing readings far above our students’ abilities.  Through my observations and dealings with my ESL students I often substituted words and simplified grammar to help them understand questions on their worksheets: for example, instead of saying “Describe three characteristics of a beneficial arthropod,” I would rephrase the question and say “Tell me three ways an arthropod is helpful.”  In most cases rephrasing questions in this manner elicited correct responses from even my most limited English proficient student and it also helped the other more proficient students to solidify the meanings of words and nuances of word meanings.  Short (1991) supports making accommodations for ESL students in content area classes “through the adaptation of language materials, the presentation of information that is more comprehensible to these students and the focus on communicating about the content while increasing student interaction” (p. 7).  This type of “language-sensitive content instruction,” in Short’s terms, was really able to produce good results with the three students.  [paragraph 17]

The third simple way to help students learn more as they read is to “identify the language demands” as noted above by Noguchi (1998) and present students with examples of ways to help them get more from the readings.  In the science classroom, some of these language demands might include cause/effect, compare/contrast and sequencing.  Teachers can help ESL students develop reading strategies to identify cause and effect relationships by showing students how certain words, such as “because,” “therefore,” and “as a result of,” prompt this particular kind of scientific discourse.  Even more important is to then teach specific strategies to help students understand each type of discourse through simple worksheets and graphic organizers.  Regarding compare/contrast identify and discuss the meanings of words such as “like,” “similar,” “even,” and  “yet” with ESL students.  Then teach strategies on how to create effective graphic organizers, especially Venn diagrams, which are extremely useful graphic reinforcements for this type of discourse.  Teach students to understand sequencing in the use of words such as “first,” “next,” “lastly,” “finally,” “second,” and “additionally” and teach ways to effectively take notes (Cornell Note-Taking Method3) and to create marginal gloss notes on their reading assignments.  These were particularly effective strategies for the students I tutored.  I showed the Chinese student how to underline words such as "first," "second," and so on and mark in the margin each step as 1, 2, and 3 where the sequences of events began and ended.  After modeling this strategy, he looked at me and said, “I never knew I could do that.”  It was a moment where I felt the student said, "Ah-ha!, I get it!"  [paragraph 18]

Fourth, KWL (Know, Want to Know and What I Learned) exercises and brainstorming are great strategies in getting students warmed up and activating their prior knowledge in class, which is advised in the NSES standards.  I often utilized this technique with the Korean student.  Once I realized that he had an aptitude for science I would start by asking him to tell me all he could in English about our subject of the day (bacteria, plants, worms etc…).  Then we would attack the reading material with my role mainly to simplify text and help identify where his prior knowledge, as he expressed, would match the reading material.  This gave the student a great sense of accomplishment.  His smile showed when readings in English made sense to him and was well worth the effort.  [paragraph 19]

The fifth effective strategy is using graphic organizers to help ESL students better “see” relationships between concepts.  I would routinely work with my three students to draw maps of various biological concepts such as drawing relationships among classes of animals, looking at similarities between species from each class and helping to visualize life cycles of animals (liver flukes in my case).  The Chinese and Puerto Rican students, who had been in the United States for about one year, seemed to benefit most from these types of strategies during our tutoring sessions; the girl from Puerto Rico was independently producing graphic organizers to supplement her readings at the end of just four weeks.  [paragraph 20]

Sixth, simple teaching of vocabulary cannot be ignored.  Vocabulary building will go a very long way in assisting ESL students in the science classroom.  The students I tutored received no straightforward vocabulary instruction--that I could ascertain--before being given assigned readings and homework questions.  This puts ESL students at a huge disadvantage.  Simple vocabulary worksheets and dissection of words (looking at prefixes, suffixes, and root words) will help ESL students build the vocabulary that they can use to make science part of their everyday life.  In discussing the word "nocturnal" with the Puerto Rican girl I asked her to say the word “night” in Spanish.  Then I asked her to read the word "nocturnal" again and see if she could build upon the similarities between the English "nocturnal" and Spanish words "noche."  It was very clear to her that nocturnal had something to do with the night, since the two words had the same Latin root meaning night.  [paragraph 21]

These suggestions are just the tip of the iceberg.  There are many wonderful and easy strategies that science teachers can integrate into lessons to make science accessible to all, including ESL students.  As Buxton (1999) suggests, explicitly addressing vocabulary and technical terms, carefully integrating language functions such as summarizing, rephrasing, classifying and evaluating, and making explicit the different structures and features of the language of science would all be important to the success of ESL students in science classrooms.  [paragraph 22]

Conclusion

This limited, yet valuable, opportunity to tutor ESL students in my content area has shaped my vision of what teaching science to all really means.  I agree with Anstrom, Lynch, & Dicerbo (1998) that “ensuring that [ESL students] have equal access to challenging academic content depends, to a large extent, on the existence of skilled teachers who are trained in the use of effective educational practices for these students” (online).  The training is out there to help us become better teachers and all we need to do is adapt our teaching styles and be aware of our tendencies to talk too much science and place low value on teaching students appropriate reading strategies to attack our course materials. [paragraph 23]

With the demands from the NSES that science education is for all students, science teachers need to begin to redesign their classes and teaching practices to better serve their diverse student population.  Vine (1997) reminds science teachers as well as other content area teachers of the importance of language teaching across the curriculum: “Curriculum content can provide a source of interest and motivation to learn for students, but the content must be made accessible to them…we need to move beyond leaving the language to take care of itself” (p. 22).  All of these differences in scientific discourse provide barriers to a student’s ability to learn science.  The knowledge of these differences would “suggest that greater intervention and guidance may be necessary in” teaching ESL students’ science (Jaipal, 2001, p. 6).  In many cases, this means teaching students specific reading strategies to deal with the demands of scientific language.  This concept is mirrored by Vine in her research regarding language across the curriculum:  "[S]cience teachers, like all teachers, are indeed language teachers.  Their students will need to effectively use a wide range of language skills as they learn in science.  Teachers cannot assume that their students have these essential skills” (p. 8).  [paragraph 24]

 Endnotes

1. I completed the tutoring experiences for a graduate course, Teaching English as a Second Language,"  offered at Eastern University.

 2. SMOG readability formula, an alternative to the Fry readability formula, describes the difficulty (or grade level) of understanding a piece of literature of text.  This formula uses the frequency of three-syllable words in a thirty-sentence sample to assess difficulty level.  In trying several different readability formulas on the science texts, I found that the SMOG formula assessed difficulty level within a reasonable grade level of the intended audience.

3. Cornell Note-Taking Method is a popular method to organize notes into an effective study guide.  It promotes higher-order thinking and helps students to reflect on what they have taken notes on from lectures and readings.  The students work through an exercise where they select the notes they feel are important, reduce those notes into main ideas and reflect or summarize the main idea of the notes.

References

Anstrom, K., Lynch, S. &  Dicerbo, P. (Eds.). (1998). Preparing secondary education teachers to work with English language learners: Science.  NCBE Resource Collection Series No. 11, December 1998.  [Online] <Available: http://www.ncbe.gwu.edu/ncbepubs/resource/ells/science.htm> [April 10th, 2002]

Buxton, C. (1999). The emergence of a language of instruction for successful model-based elementary science learning: Lessons from a bilingual classroom. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Association for Bilingual Education. Denver, CO.  (ERIC Document Reproduction Services ED 436 957)

Buxton, C. (1998). Improving the science education of English language learners: Capitalizing on educational reform. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, 4 (4), 341-369.

Cummins, J. (2002). Putting language proficiency in its place: Responding to critiques of the conversational/academic language distinction. [Online] <Available: http://www.iteachilearn.com/cummins/converacademlangdisti.html>  [May 10th 2002].

Eyring, J. L. (2001). Experiential and negotiated language learning.  In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.). Teaching English as a second or foreign language (pp. 333-344). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.

Hawkins, B. (2001). Supporting second language children’s content learning and language development in K-5.  In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.). Teaching English as a second or foreign language (pp. 367-383). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.

Jaipal, K. (2001). English second language students in a grade 11 biology class: Relationships between language and learning. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Seattle, Washington.

Minicucci, C. (1996). Learning science and English: How school reform advances scientific learning for limited English proficient middle school students. National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning, Educational Practice Report: 17. [Online] <Available: http://www.ncbe.gwu.edu/miscpubs/ncrcdsll/epr17.htm> [April 10^th, 2002].  

National Research Council. (1996). National science education standards.  Washington, DC: National Academy.

Newman, K. L., & Nyikos, M. (1999). Making content comprehensible for English language learners: The SIOP model. [Review of the book].  Bilingual Research Journal [online], 23 (4), <Available: http://brj.asu.edu/v234/articles/art9.html > [May, 20th, 2002]

Noguchi, J. (1998). “Easifying” ESP texts for EFL science majors. Proceedings of The Japan Conference on English for Specific Purposes. Aizuwakamatsu City, Fukushima, Japan. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 424 776).

Short, D. J. (1991).  How to integrate language and content instruction: A training manual.  Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.  (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 359 780).

Vine, E.W. (1997). Language across the curriculum: The language learning potential in a science text.  New Zealand Council for Educational Research, Wellington & Australian Council for Educational Research, Melbourne. (ERIC Document Reproduction Services ED 424 763).  

Julie Shaw is currently a graduate student completing M. Ed. in Multicultural Education program and Secondary School Certification in Biology at Eastern University.  After completing her undergraduate study in biology at Villanova University, she worked for over seven years with a major educational media distributor, evaluating and marketing educational products matching the curriculum needs of schools and libraries across the United States.  (She can be reached at jshaw@eastern.edu)

Recommended Citation in the APA Style:

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