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A genre-based approach to writing in an upper primary science classroom
Author
Yeo, Kirk Boone
Supervisor
Cheung, Yin Ling
Abstract
Science is one of the major fields that is synonymous with power which reaches into the economic, military and social aspects of human society. Scientists form their own discourse community and use language in a way that has its own idiosyncrasies, forms and genres that are valued and may be different compared to those of other communities. Given its importance to human civilization, students in primary schools are exposed to the learning of science at an early age. Although the language used in science for schools is adjusted to accommodate students’ learning, researchers have found that the language of school science still contains features that can be found in professional scientific texts. It was found that students in primary schools, even in Singapore, have problems understanding and producing in their science classes texts that are appropriate. Researchers have found that genre-based pedagogy informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics can aid students in understanding and producing appropriate texts. The research question for this study is whether the use of genre-based pedagogy would help to improve the writings of Singaporean students in the genres of procedural texts and explanations situated in the science content area. In Singapore, curriculum time in school for science is devoted to the study of concepts and not much emphasis is placed on writing. This has led to students not producing appropriate texts for their tasks in the science classroom. Even the local papers in Singapore have published articles on whether answers written by students in response to test questions were deemed acceptable. The situation where students face problems in producing appropriate texts in the science content area seems to be a phenomenon that can be found in primary school classrooms throughout Singapore based on a separate study. This is an area of concern when it is important for students to gain understanding in science to allow them more life choices as they grow up. This study seeks to understand if the use of genre-based pedagogy informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics can aid primary school students in Singapore to produce appropriate science texts that are commonly found in school science. For the scope of this study, two genres were selected: procedural texts and explanations. The two texts were chosen in view of their importance in the sciences. Procedural texts are used in the detailing and documentation of the steps that are needed to carry out experiments. While explanations seek to provide answers to physical phenomenon that can be observed in our universe. In gathering the answers for the research question, the study used a one-group pretest posttest design that collected the writings from the students for analysis. A one-group pretest posttest design was used due to the constraints the researcher faced in the study. The writings for procedural texts and explanations were collected and scored by two raters using a modified rubric developed for genre-based pedagogy. The writings for explanations were analyzed further by using a L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer to determine the possible scope of improvement made by the students in the writing of explanations. The findings from the study found that through the use of genre-based pedagogy, there was improvement made by the students in the production of procedural texts and explanations. The findings from this study can assist educators in finding a way to bridge conceptual knowledge of science and the use of language in order to enable students to have the ability to produce that knowledge in writing in the classroom.
Date Issued
2016
Call Number
PE1475 Yeo
Date Submitted
2016