• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.30-43
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• 2022

In this study, elementary students' science communication competence was investigated based on the grammatical features expressed in their language-use in classroom discourse and science writings. The classes were designed to integrate the evidence-based reasoning framework and traditional learning cycle and were conducted on fifth graders in an elementary school. Eight elementary students' discourse data and writings were analyzed using lexico-grammatical resource analysis, which examined the discourse text's content and logical relations. The results revealed that the student language used in analyzing data, interpreting evidence, or constructing explanations did not precisely conform to the grammatical features in science language use. However, they provided examples of grammatical metaphors by nominalizing observed events in the classroom discourses and those of causal relations in their writings. Thus, elementary students can use science language grammatically from science language-use experiences through listening to a teacher's instructional discourses or recognizing the grammatical structures of science texts in workbooks. The opportunities in which elementary students experience the language-use model in science learning need to be offered to understand the appropriate language use in the epistemic context of evidence-based reasoning and learn literacy skills in science.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.288-299
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• 2010

Recently, scientific literacy means not only the acquisition of scientific knowledge but also the linguistic ability to participate in a scientific discourse community. Keeping this in mind, this study investigated middle school students' writings about phase transitions of water in air. Sixty seven students at 9th grade (age 15) students participated in this study and wrote two individual short texts. The result of text analysis can be summarized as follows: (1) students had problems with familiar scientific terms such as 'water vapor' and 'steam' as well as unfamiliar ones like 'dew point'. (2) Students described right semantic relations and at the same time wrong ones more in the idea formed from everyday experience than those from school instruction. (3) While students showed action and process centered writing in text about everyday phenomenon, they showed more preference for technical words and nouns in text about school science. This study suggest that students could develop linguistic ability of science from both spontaneous process based on experience and formal and theoretical learning; the former in forming various semantic relations, the latter in technical and abstract aspect of scientific writing.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.535-544
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• 2019

In order to find out whether the traditional mass media in our society are sufficiently functioning as a vehicle of providing scientific information to the public outside the school education, public perception of science articles in mass media and scientific terms used in high frequency in science articles have been examined. To investigate the public perception on science articles, a questionnaire was constructed about the usefulness, importance, access frequency, and understanding of science articles. The questionnaires were conducted in areas with high flow populations such as train stations or subway stations. A total of 425 responses were used for analysis. In order to extract high frequency scientific terms used in science articles, two television companies and two newspapers were designated as target media, and their texts on science articles reported over the last 17 years were collected to investigate the frequency of scientific terms used. Based on the frequency, we conducted the self-report comprehension test for the top 100 scientific terms. The results of this study show that the public in our society has relatively high perception of the importance and usefulness of science articles, however, reading and understanding the articles seems to be somewhat difficult. In addition, the scientific terminology used in science articles has a high degree of comprehension for those of higher education, natural sciences majors, and men. In addition, scientific terms with high understanding degree were characterized according to gender, age, educational background, and field of major.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.20-31
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• 2006

This study analysed student teachers' notable questions about the earth science contents in the elementary science textbooks. The contents of notable questions were defined as ‘notable question contents 1' and 'notable question contents 2'. Both the question contorts are contents about which the number of questions is above three times and from two times to three times as much as the mean number of questions per page of each unit respectively. The results are as follows. First, question contents 1 are found as 'clouds observation', 'geological strata formation' and so on. Question contents 2, 'rainfall measurement', 'moon's movement during one night' and so on are found. Second, the number of interrelationships of main terms in questions increased in each question of question contents 1, but 4 term-patterns are found more in question contents 2 than question contents 1. Third, high interrelationship patterns of terms in question contents 1 are 'coal and petroleum-generation', 'metamorphosis-heat and pressure', 'metamorphosis-heat and pressure-metamorphic rocks', 'planet-sun-comet-revolution' and in question contents 2. 'constellation plate-use', 'dryness and wetness hygrometer-principle', 'seismograph-principle-earthquake', 'earth rotation axis-tilting-occurrence', 'dryness and wetness hygrometer-principle-humidity' and so on. The sources of questions analysed in this study are estimated as the content construction system of textbooks, or students' general questions about the earth science contents. If this is the former, the problems in texts and illustrations in textbooks should be articulated and resolved. And if the latter, the elementary science curriculum has to be reconsidered in view of scientific literacy in earth science.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.84-98
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• 2011

The study investigated the linguistic characteristics of middle school students' writing on the themes of earth science through analysis of its genre and register. Data for analysis included $7^{th}$ grade and $9^{th}$ grade students' writings about 'global warming' and 'classification of rocks'. The results of this study include: First, many students were not accustomed to writing in genre, especially exposition genre. Second, in terms of ideational meaning, the material verbs representing action or doing were more dominant than relational verbs that are related to the attribute or definition of things, and additional logical relations were predominant. Third, regarding interpersonal meaning, agents, emotions, subjective opinions appeared in the writings and students did not express their ideas conclusively and revealed feelings of doubt and uncertainty about their knowledge. Fourth, as for textual meaning, most students listed fragments of information using additional conjunctions in simple structures and were not accustomed to writing texts with organizing structures, logical patterns, cohesion, and coherence. From these results, we argued that the scientific writings should be emphasized in science learning that aims to foster scientific literacy. In addition, we discussed the necessity of improving science teachers' perceptions on scientific writing as well as setting up a specific plan in the national curriculum.