• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.31 no.7
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• pp.785-797
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• 2010

This study identified the linguistic features of Earth science treatises through the analysis of the register. Data included three Korean treatises that were in geology, atmospheric science, and oceanography. The register of Earth science treatise was as follows: First, there were semantic, referential connections between Themes and Rhemes, that the messages and main points of the texts were expressed coherently and cohesively. Second, some predicates were used which were related to deductive inference, abductive inferences, or causal relation according to the genre elements of each text. The logical relations were not represented by the conjunctions but by the types of predicates. Third, most texts in the treatises showed interpersonally weak relationship using mental predicates related to possibilities, which meant scientists expressed indirectly their interpretation, explanation, or arguments. From these results, we argued that some activities of unpacking the language of science be included in science curriculum in order to improve students' literacy of science texts and understanding scientists' knowledge construction.