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The development of chemical language usage by “non-traditional” students: the interlanguage analogy

Rees, S.W.; Kind, V.; Newton, D.

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Abstract

Students commonly find specialist scientific language problematic. This study investigated developments in chemical language usage by six non-traditional students over the course of 1 to 4 years. The students participated in semi-structured interviews and were asked to explain specific chemical scenarios. Interviews were transcribed and analysed for the correct use of macroscopic and sub-microscopic scientific language and occurrences of interlanguage. Results indicate that students experienced difficulties incorporating sub-microscopic language into their explanations. Students also demonstrated potential chemical interlanguage, which we characterise as transitioning from vague to defined use, combining everyday and scientific language, interchanging terms and omission of terms and formulaic phrases. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to science pedagogy.

Citation

Rees, S., Kind, V., & Newton, D. (2018). The development of chemical language usage by “non-traditional” students: the interlanguage analogy. Research in Science Education, 51(2), 419-438. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-018-9801-0

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Nov 22, 2018
Online Publication Date Dec 19, 2018
Publication Date Dec 1, 2018
Deposit Date Sep 14, 2018
Publicly Available Date Jan 15, 2019
Journal Research in Science Education
Print ISSN 0157-244X
Electronic ISSN 1573-1898
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 51
Issue 2
Pages 419-438
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-018-9801-0

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Advance online version © The Author(s) 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.





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