Reflections on Language Competence in Science Education

By

Igono Joseph
Department of French,
Umar Suleiman College of Education
P.M.B 02 Gashua, Yobe State
TEL: 08065952874; E-mail: joesmary2003@yahoo.fr
 ABSTRACT

Reflections on Language Competence in Science Education

The mastery of science is crucial to the development of any nation. But to

master science, one has to acquire the most important tools that enable one
to comprehend scientific thoughts and process. This paper highlights the
importance of language to science education and argues that the acquisition
of language competence is essential towards the understanding of science
and how it works. It concludes that a data-driven scientific knowledge
should be encouraged to improve learners’ language ability.

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Introduction
The issue of language has never been left out in the discussions relating to
students’ performance in science. (See: Igono, M. 2005). When environment
and incentives are mentioned perhaps, the next problem that readily comes
to mind is language competence. By language competence here, it is meant
the ability to comprehend and use a given language in such a way that
enables one to function in a specialized knowledge community. Language
competence has two epistemological components, factual and procedural
(Kiraly D. C., 1978). By factual knowledge it is meant, knowledge about the
nature of things. Procedural knowledge tells how things works and the
process by which they work. Both kinds of knowledge provide the means by
which the learners respond to the challenges posed by social experience and
human needs.

Language is ordinarily used to communicate thoughts, sentiments and

knowledge about the world and other realities. Beyond the general language
which we use for our day to day communication, every specialized field has,
its own language and the language of this specialized speech community
ought to be mastered if one is to do well in that field. Talking about
specialized language brings a distinction between it and the general
language.

This distinction between general and specialized language exist not in the
communicative use as such but in the kinds of information contents and the
situation in which communication takes place. As far as the language of

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science and technology are concerned, and according to Sager (1980:18), it
could simply be said that we use language to convey to others such
information about our knowledge and experience of reality as we could
possibly be expressed in language. These manners of communication reveal
one’s state of knowledge at a given time and serves to affect the knowledge
of one’s listener or reader in the sense that they confirm, modify or add to
his or her knowledge. This fact is hardly highlighted in science education.

In the consideration of problems of science education, most professional

debates on the teaching and learning of science are nearly always focused
upon the teaching strategies that foster the understanding of the subject
matters. Hardly is it the case that science teachers reflect on the kind of
language that is needed to perform well in the subject. In this paper, the
writer looks at the nature of language and the role of language in science
education. The means by which scientific language competence can be
improved is also discussed.

Language of Science as both communicative and Functional

Going by Halliday’s (1978) view, language is better described as ‘social

semiotic’. It is a vital resource for meaning, centrally involved in the
processes by which “human beings negotiate, construct and change the
nature of social experience” (Frances C. 1990: VI). This is a description that
sees language from semantics and communicative points. It is a conception
of language capable of describing available provisions that offer frequent
opportunities for language use and understanding of language functions.

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This description points to the closeness of thought and expression on the one
hand and the proximity between grammar and rhetoric; between form and
style, between what is said and the environment in which it is said on the
other. It recognizes the closeness between language and the socially created
purposes in using it, and then how language components are selected and
organized to create meaning.
The notion of communication reveals that people behave and speak
differently in different situations (Pearson, J. 1998:26) and points to the
varied classes to which communication can be set. This too brings us to the
notion of register. Although register is essential in speech, its instantiations
is more prevalent in genre. Hodge and Kress (1988:7) view genre as “typical
forms of corpus which link kinds of producer, consumer, topic, medium,
manner and occasion … [and] control the behavior of producers of such
corpus, and the expectations of potential consumers.” In speech act terms, if
in one language the attributes of a corpus produced by one expert (topic,
participants, time, and place) are similar to those of another corpus produced
by another expert in the same speech community in so far as the competence
to share these attributes are acquired and active. This is why science
education must concentrate upon exploring how the language of science, are
systematically patterned towards important social ends” (cf. Frances, C.
1990: VII).

The Place of Language in Science Education

There is no doubt that language is a vital resource for the building of science
experience. It is the major medium for the teaching and the learning of
science. In science education, the kind of role intended for language is such
that provides a legitimate contribution to the development of the learners. At

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one point in science education in Nigeria, it was mandatory to obtain a pass
at credit level in English language, which is the medium of instruction in the
Nigerian schools, before being allowed to read science. As time goes on,
English was seen as a major huddle to obtaining admission to read science in
the Nigerian tertiary institutions following massive failures in the language.
This subsequently led to the setting aside of the requirement of a credit in
English with the argument that language is actually not too important in the
learning of science.

Over time, it is often seen that candidate who are poor in the language of
instruction also perform poorly in science education and the reasons shifted
to cognitive dissonance resulting from mother tongue and other tongue.
While this debate will go for awhile, what we know as teachers and must be
said is that by giving learners instructions to carry out some tasks, we
subscribe to the basic truth that part of what a child learns and knows about
language is that it can be used to get things done and can also be used to
influence behaviors. The strange thing however, is that, when the learner
failed to perform very well in science classes, adequate considerations are
rarely given to the linguistic constrains that the learner may be facing which
limit his/her ability to learn the rudiments of what is being thought. The
questions of fundamental importance in science education therefore, have
been the following:
1. how does one teach about language in a science class in such a

way that the learners will develop needed language abilities to

be able to understand, communicate and use science in a
productive manner;

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 2. how can one create language consciousness in science classes

in a way that science learning is not aimed at mere linguistic

exercise but science oriented learning, and
3. how can a science teacher make the learners understand and

benefit from the communicative imports of science texts and

science lessons?

Acquisition of Language competence in Science Education

Understanding of terms and concepts used in science and mastering the
procedures of doing things (project instructions) are crucial bench marks for
evaluating level of acquisitions of scientific knowledge. A good portion of
the science teachers believe that explicit knowledge about language has
nothing to do with proper teaching and learning of science subjects. And the
attending implications of this on learners’ poor performance in science in
Nigeria have not called to consciousness that the kinds of knowledge about
language made available to the learners of science are of a very limited
nature, reducing their capacity to achieve.

The role of a science teacher in the class should not only be teaching of
course contents but also to demonstrate how things work and how they are
made to work. This of course cannot be done unless the learners understand
adequately what is taught and how to follow the advice that is given on how
to acquire science. To aspire to be a scientist is to act and behave like a
scientist. Science classes should be seen as an avenue for language teaching
and learning in addition to acquisition of the contents of the subject matter.
From a pedagogical perspective therefore, what matters is not necessarily the

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quality of the results obtained, but providing the consciousness to use
language appropriately (cf. Jappy 1996: 148).

It is advocated that besides giving language related exercise to students and

correcting language errors found in their scripts, the principle of data-driven
learning should be encouraged (Johns 1991, 1993). Corpus data that contain
vital materials can be customized through careful selection of examples or
sample of corpus. A corpus is usually defined as “an assembly of bodies of
texts” (Johansson, 1995:19). But today’s use of the term extends to “any
collection of running texts… held in electronic form and analyzable
automatically or semi-automatically” (Baker, 1993: 234). The initial goal of
such collections was the extraction of information for linguistic descriptions
(Aarts, 1991:15).

Such materials are essential source of semantic and grammatical information

that the students can easily glean in order to reinforce their knowledge of
science language. It is also another opportunity for the student to also
encounter authentic contexts and collocation patterns that are natural to
science texts. For Tim Johns (1991), the leading exponent of the corpus
approach in learning, the characteristic element is ‘the attempt to ... give the
learner direct access to the data, the underlying assumption being that
effective language learning is a form of linguistic research, and that the
concordance printout offers a unique way of stimulating inductive learning
strategies’. Students can be encouraged to use the appropriate terms and
concepts in their discussion on science and about science with such corpora.

Conclusion

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With respect to science, learners need to be made aware of the semantic
implication of terms and concepts used within a given field. Understanding
is of paramount importance here. The fact that language is both an
instrument for meaning and interpretation of phenomenon implies that the
socio-cultural aspects of language and its consequent implications on
science education ought to be stressed. The need for science teachers to go
beyond the teaching of subject matters and demonstrate how human beings
use their language for living, deserves emphases than is currently the case in
science education. This is because, meaning and the critical role of language
in building meanings are simply overlooked by many science teachers.

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Frances, C. (1990) Language Education Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Hodge, R. and G. Kress (1988). Social Semiotics. Cambridge: Polity.
Igono, M. (2004) Analysis of the performance of students in the Department
of Pre-NCE, College of Education, Yobe State Unpublished PGDE
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