‘May I speak Cantonese?’ – Co-constructing a scientific proof in an EFL junior secondary science classroom

Abstract

In this paper, an excerpt of teacher–student interaction in an EFL junior secondary science classroom in Hong Kong is analysed using the conversation analytic method of sequential analysis. The fine-grained analysis reveals that in the teacher's effort to engage her students in the co-construction of a scientific proof, the students' familiar everyday discourses (e.g. students' examples and experiences as expressed in their familiar language) need to be allowed to play a significant role. It also shows how translanguaging can be well-coordinated with multimodal practices (using blackboard drawings, gestures) to facilitate students' meaning-making in the inquiry-based teacher–student dialogue.

Keywords:

• content and language integrated learning
• conversation analysis
• multimodalities
• thematic patterns of science
• translanguaging

Notes

1. Secondary schools in Hong Kong are divided into three bands according to their students’ academic results, with band 1 representing the highest and band 3 the lowest, respectively.

2. All teacher and student names used are pseudo-names.

3. To better understand Jenny’s thinking during this episode, the second author conducted a post-lesson interview with Jenny, with one of the questions being why she decided to interact with the students in this excerpt. Jenny retrospectively reported that the decision was made on the spot without much planning before the lesson, but two considerations crossed her mind at that time which prompted her to try out questioning:

• (a) She felt that other than blank-filling and lecturing, questioning and eliciting students’ responses may also be needed so as to know if the students have really understood the science concepts accurately, after observing that in the previous blank-filling exercise that some students wrongly wrote ‘Everything that has space and mass is matter’ (see Appendix 1 for the worksheet), i.e. ‘Something has a space (of...)’ and ‘Something takes up space’ represent two different concepts and only the latter can accurately represent one of the defining features of matter. For example, we can say, ‘An empty box has a space of 1 cm³ inside it’, but this sentence cannot accurately represent one of the defining features of matter.

• (b) Some science literature Jenny had read flashed back to her at that moment which suggests that the sequence of scientific investigation (observation-hypothesis-experiment-conclusion) sometimes may need to be adapted in school science teaching, as some experimental procedures and observations may have diverse rationales and interpretations and pose too high a cognitive load for students if they have to follow the procedures and think simultaneously; students may be confused and distracted from drawing sensible conclusions. Jenny thus thought it might be a good alternative to work backwards from a statement/conclusion and guide students to think about the experimental procedures needed to prove the statement/conclusion so that the students may understand both the key ideas of the statement and the experimental procedures better. At that particular moment when she finished off the exercise, she realised that the items can be described and turned into a statement/conclusion in relation to the properties of matter and it may be a good opportunity to try out her idea of working backwards from a statement/conclusion and guiding students to think about the experimental procedures needed to prove the statement/conclusion.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the Hong Kong Public Policy Research Fund [grant number HKU7018-PPR-12].