Language gap between college introductory physics textbooks and high school physics textbooks

Abstract

This study investigates the extent of the difficulty faced by college students taking an introductory physics class by comparing linguistic differences in terminology between a high school physics textbook and a college introductory physics textbook. In addition, it explores new linguistic expressions used to teach introductory physics in college, which specifically lead to information on the content and expressions that students are familiar with as well as new content and expressions. This information can be utilized to formulate teaching strategies. Text from the chapters on ‘force’ is extracted from a high school physics textbook and a college introductory physics textbook. The text was studied in terms of word frequency analysis, N-gram analysis, keyword analysis, and network analysis. Results indicate that about 70% of the text in the college introductory physics textbook had new words not used in the high school physics textbook, and these words were used to elaborate on the content covered in high school. In introductory physics, a large number of words are interconnected in complex relationships. However, from an educational viewpoint, since the relationship between these words is not explicitly shown and not used often in the textbook, students may find it difficult to understand the content. This study inferred students’ prior knowledge of physics by examining the linguistic expressions central to high school textbooks. The results suggest that when teaching introductory physics in college, it is necessary to consider the content or expressions that students are familiar with and those that they are unfamiliar with.