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Abstract
This paper investigates popular science articles written by Swedish high school students as part of a project aimed at building their knowledge of the content of their natural science curriculum by integrating it with their Swedish language studies. This work, an effort to promote content-area literacy and knowledge-building, was undertaken during their project time. By analyzing the students´ texts, the purpose of the study was to access their value as knowledge-building tools. The analysis of the texts was carried out utilizing Maton´s (2013) theoretical concepts of waves of semantic density and semantic gravity, which are seen as a prerequisite for cumulative knowledge-building. The investigation extends previous studies on semantic waves since it incorporates into the analyses both linguistic features and visual elements. The students were writing in pairs and a total of six texts were analyzed. The text analyses showed three different types of semantic profiles, with four of the texts including features that served as means of cumulative knowledge-building. In a concluding section, some pedagogical implications of the study are considered.
Highlights
This study explores content area literacy and how writing is used as a knowledge-building tool by a secondary school teaching team, at a high school located on the West Coast of Sweden, here referred to as the T-unit
It targeted the question of the extent to which the student texts reporting on scientific investigations fulfilled their function as knowledge-building tools
The answer to this question was sought by investigating the waves of semantic density (SD+) and contextualization/semantic gravity (SG+) in accordance with Matons (2013) notion of cumulative knowledge-building
Summary
This study explores content area literacy and how writing is used as a knowledge-building tool by a secondary school teaching team, at a high school located on the West Coast of Sweden, here referred to as the T-unit. At the T-unit, subject-integration between language study and the natural sciences during so-called project time (4 hours/week) was carried out. The natural science curriculum provided the content and the language activities were used as a means of communication and a learning tool. At Swedish high schools, the natural science program is considered the most difficult, and project time was launched as a way of counteracting the increasing number of students dropping out of the program. The instructional design was based upon the premise that students drop out of the natural sciences program because of the complexity of the scientific content, and because of the complexity of the language through which that content is conveyed: highly condensed sentences, replete with technical terminology and abstractions, embedded in clause structures that are rare in normal, everyday conversations and prose (Halliday 1998; Schleppegrell 2004; Veel 1997). The model proved a success: more students succeeded in getting through the natural science program and, in addition, a higher number of students passed the national language test with distinction
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