[[alternative]]Applying Science Writing in Science Teaching and Assessing -- An Example of Describing and Explaining of the Acid-Base Phenomenon in the Movie

Abstract

[[abstract]]Applying Science Writing in Science Teaching and Assessing -- An Example of Describing and Explaining of the Acid-Base Phenomenon in the Movie Abstract Drawn on the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), the present study aims to explore the effects of applying science writing in science teaching and assessing. A Quasi-experiment was designed. After reading a text extracted from the science textbook, the experimental group was asked to accomplish science writing task as watching movie film, while the control group just watched movie film only. These students’ performance of acid-base tests and academic achievement including Chinese and Science were collected. Students’ science writing texts were analyzed by the grammatical system of transitivity in SFL and the relations between science writing and learning achievement were analyzed. The major findings were as follows: 1. In the text of students’ science writing, observational clauses were more than explanatory ones, the average lexical density was 3.14, where 29% was science content words. 2. Students’ science writing text was significant correlated with their academic achievement in Chinese and Science. However the coefficient of the later was higher than the former. 3. The experimental group performed better than the control group in the achievement test. Reading the science text promoted high-grade students’ learning achievement, while reading the science text accompanied with science writing promoted both high- and low-grade students’ achievements. 4. The combinations of the amount of content words, clauses and rank-shift, observational and explanatory clauses could be serve as possible rubrics for assessing the quality of students’ science writing. Issues and implications in science teaching of the above findings were discussed, and suggestions were proposed for further study.