Current Science

Open Access Open Access  Restricted Access Subscription Access

Linguistic Resources to Facilitate Science Education


Affiliations
1 Department of English, B. S. Abdur Rahman Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai 600 048, India
2 Sattva Training Academy, Grenville Terrace, Roxburgh Park, Victoria 3064, Australia
 

The present study emphasizes the need to mobilize linguistic resources to facilitate science education. In a multilingual country like India, when students opt for science education through English at any level – secondary, higher secondary or tertiary – they face the daunting task of mastering language as well as science. A study of nearly 1.5 million word corpus of science textbooks has revealed the level of lexical difficulty faced by the learners. Hence researchers have created corpus based word lists for each level on the basis of ‘keyness’ and ‘frequency’. These could be powerful pedagogic tools to facilitate science education.

Keywords

Corpus Study, Linguistic Resources, Keywords, Science Education.
User
Notifications
Font Size

  • Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 2017, 20th edn; https://www.ethnologue.com/language/eng/[Google Scholar] (accessed on 15 May 2018).

  • Hsueh-Chao, M. H. and Nation, P., Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension. Read. Foreign Lang., 2000, 13(1), 403– 430.

  • Laufer, B. and Ravenhorst-Kalovski, G. C., Lexical threshold revisited: Lexical text coverage, learners’ vocabulary size and reading comprehension. Read. Foreign Lang., 2010, 22(1), 15–30.

  • MHRD, Statistics of School Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, 2017; http://mhrd.gov.in/statist?field_statistics_category_tid=33 (accessed on 6 June 2018).

  • Scott, M., PC analysis of keywords – and key keywords. System, 1997, 25(1), 1–13.

  • Viswanathan, U. M. and Sultana, A. S., An Indian ESWL: a pedagogic tool to improve the lexical competency of students in context of horizontal diversity. Asian EFL J., 2018, 20(4), 23–38.


Abstract Views: 432

PDF Views: 125




  • Linguistic Resources to Facilitate Science Education

Abstract Views: 432  |  PDF Views: 125

Authors

Uma Maheswari Viswanathan
Department of English, B. S. Abdur Rahman Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai 600 048, India
A. Shahin Sultana
Department of English, B. S. Abdur Rahman Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai 600 048, India
Suhasini Shankar
Sattva Training Academy, Grenville Terrace, Roxburgh Park, Victoria 3064, Australia

Abstract


The present study emphasizes the need to mobilize linguistic resources to facilitate science education. In a multilingual country like India, when students opt for science education through English at any level – secondary, higher secondary or tertiary – they face the daunting task of mastering language as well as science. A study of nearly 1.5 million word corpus of science textbooks has revealed the level of lexical difficulty faced by the learners. Hence researchers have created corpus based word lists for each level on the basis of ‘keyness’ and ‘frequency’. These could be powerful pedagogic tools to facilitate science education.

Keywords


Corpus Study, Linguistic Resources, Keywords, Science Education.

References





DOI: https://doi.org/10.18520/cs%2Fv118%2Fi2%2F271-273