Date of Award
2011
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Education
Program
Education
Supervisor
Dr. Farahnaz Faez
Abstract
This study examined the nature and frequency of scientific vocabulary encountered in Science classrooms. The corpora that were analyzed include a Science textbook used at the 10th-grade level as well as transcripts of teacher-fronted lectures on three occasions.
Interviews with one Science teacher were also conducted in order to understand the context of a secondary Science classroom in Ontario. Approximately 15% of the lexicon from the total corpora was scientific in nature. From the analysis of the scientific vocabulary, six lexical classes emerged with varying proportions between the written and the spoken corpora. Complexities of the scientific lexicon as realized from this study reveal that scientific vocabulary forms an extensive portion of the total corpus which makes explicit vocabulary instruction extremely important for all students, especially ELLs.
Recommended Citation
Vidwans, Mithila, "THE LEXICON OF SCIENCE: EXTRACTING THE SCIENTIFIC VOCABULARY FROM WRITTEN AND SPOKEN CORPORA" (2011). Digitized Theses. 3564.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/digitizedtheses/3564