Language and Literacy in Inquiry-Based Science: Classrooms,
                    Grades 3–8

Fang, Zhihui; Pringle, Robert; Lamme, Linda Leonard

doi:10.4135/9781452219677

Cited by 38 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…For genre analysis, each text was scored on answers to six questions related to the purpose, as well as the structural and lexical conventions, of the target genre. These questions were generated based on prior work by SFL scholars that has identified structural and lexicogrammatical features characteristic of common school-based genres (e.g., Brisk, 2015; Christie & Derewianka, 2008; Coffin, 2006; Fang, 2010). An affirmative answer (yes) to each question scores 1 point, and a negative answer (no) scores 0 point.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genre and Register Features of Sixth-Grade Students’ Factual Writing

Fang

Gresser

Cao

et al. 2022

Written Communication

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Factual writing is a key macrogenre of American K-12 schooling that is also valued in workplace and society. This study examined the genre and register features of two subgenres of factual writing—biography and report—composed by 48 sixth-grade students in a curriculum unit on scientists and science-related careers aimed at developing students’ understanding of the nature of science. These texts were analyzed for a range of schematic, lexical, and grammatical features that instantiate the two target genres. Statistical and descriptive analyses revealed that the students demonstrated a fairly mature control over the schematic and lexical features that realize the purpose of either genre and relied heavily on the grammatical resources characteristic of everyday registers in constructing both genres. Additionally, there was a positive relationship between the students’ genre/register familiarity and the holistic quality of their writing, and the students’ reading proficiency was a significant predictor of their genre familiarity and holistic writing quality, but not their register understanding. These findings suggest that learning the grammatical resources characteristic of academic registers remains a major and potentially daunting task for many adolescents.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genre and Register Features of Sixth-Grade Students’ Factual Writing

Fang

Gresser

Cao

et al. 2022

Written Communication

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“…Text authoritativeness refers to the degree of personal involvement and expertness in presenting information (Fang, 2008(Fang, , 2010. Texts written for everyday interactional purposes often feature a high degree of personal involvement and low degree of authority through the use of personal pronouns (I, we), interrogative sentences (e.g., Do you know….?…”

Section: Authoritativenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…77 No. 5 March-April 2024 literacyworldwide.org confiscation of property, Jews), declarative sentences, passive voice (e.g., was blown up, was sealed), and complex syntax with implicit logical-semantic links (Fang, 2010).…”

Section: Table 5 Cloze Passage On Whooping Cranesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scaffolding Expository Reading with Picture Books: Strategies for Comprehending Informational Language

Adams,

Mertens,

Fang

et al. 2024

The Reading Teacher

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Informational texts present complex content using language that is simultaneously technical, abstract, dense, and authoritative. This article describes practical strategies to support teachers in using informational picture books to prepare upper elementary school students for navigating the complex language demands necessitated by expository reading. These strategies include morphological analysis, spotlighting discipline‐specific vocabulary, sentence completion, unpacking nominalizations, identifying actions and their agents, deconstructing noun phrases, paraphrasing complex sentences, and syntactic anatomy. They are designed for classroom teachers to support their implementation of authentic informational texts.

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“…A scientific explanation is one of the four major genres of science, in addition to information report, experimental account, and argument. Several functional linguists (e.g., Fang et al, 2010; Unsworth, 2001) have analyzed scientific genres and identified a number of distinct functional stages and linguistic characteristics. These functional stages and linguistic characteristics are summarized in Table 1 (Tang et al, 2022).…”

Section: Research On Diagrams and Explanations In Science Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The development of scientific explanation based on theories and models to account for a specific phenomenon or situation is a central part of science (National Research Council, 2012; Osborne & Patterson, 2011). Several studies investigating the nature of scientific explanation have been carried out from a range of perspectives, including the philosophy of science (e.g., Braaten & Windschitl, 2011; de Andrade et al, 2019; Tang, 2016), linguistic and genre theories (e.g., Fang et al, 2010; Seah, 2015; Unsworth, 2001), mechanistic reasoning (e.g., Moreira et al, 2019; Russ et al, 2008; Talanquer, 2010), and textbook analysis (e.g., Dimopoulos et al, 2005; Velentzas & Halkia, 2018). However, most of these accounts tend to foreground the verbal (written or spoken) explanations without analyzing the characteristics of diagrams that are central rather than auxiliary to the construction of explanation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The characteristics of diagrams in scientific explanations: Multimodal integration of written and visual modes of representation in junior high school textbooks

Tang

2023

Science Education

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There is a growing research examining the use of visual diagrams in scientific explanations. However, current research in this area is mostly based on case studies involving a few explanations from one or two topics in science. There are few systematic studies that examine more broadly how diagrams are used in relation to scientific explanations across a range of scientific texts. The aim of this study is to investigate the characteristics of diagrams in scientific explanations found in Grade 7–10 science textbooks covering many topics in biology, chemistry, earth and space sciences, and physics. The study is informed by the theories of systemic functional linguistics and social semiotics and applies a mixed methods approach to textbook analysis. A content analysis was first carried out to systematically identify the image functions (e.g., narrative, analytical, classificational) in all the diagrams (N = 749) and compare their distributions across different genres (e.g., explanation, information, experiment). This is followed by a multimodal discourse analysis to understand how the various image functions are combined with the linguistic features of the written text in the construction of scientific explanations. Quantitative results reveal explanation diagrams are characteristically different from diagrams used in other genres in terms of a higher usage of narrative function, temporal function, and annotated caption. Qualitative results further show how these image functions are typically used to support the reasoning of the explanation focusing on dynamic processes and time‐bounded sequences. This study has implications to our understanding of how diagrams are used to support the construction of scientific explanations.

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Language and Literacy in Inquiry-Based Science: Classrooms, Grades 3–8

Cited by 38 publications

References 0 publications

Genre and Register Features of Sixth-Grade Students’ Factual Writing

Genre and Register Features of Sixth-Grade Students’ Factual Writing

Scaffolding Expository Reading with Picture Books: Strategies for Comprehending Informational Language

The characteristics of diagrams in scientific explanations: Multimodal integration of written and visual modes of representation in junior high school textbooks

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