Socialising ESL Students into the Discourse of School Science through Academic Writing

Abstract

This paper takes the view of 'language socialization' (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986) to examine, through a case study of a secondary ESL science class, the instructional process that aims at facilitating the integration of specific science content learning and the construction of a particular kind of written discourse typically found in school science. The main question addressed in the paper is: How do classroom instructional activities for the development of academic writing socialize students into the world of school science in a content-based language program? The discussion focuses on the whole learning process through analyzing the data collected at different learning stages. The analysis on students' socialization into the science Discourse reveals how integration of content and language may be explicitly highlighted by teachers for students. Initial conflicts between the students' and target ways of thinking and writing are presented with a description of how conflicts are constantly negotiated through interactions with, through, and about written texts. By focusing on the process instead of one piece of product, the study has managed to go further to examine the role played by classroom instruction in integrating the students' academic content learning and written discourse construction.