Content-Based EFL Teaching to Undergraduate Science Students

2020 ◽  
pp. 208-225
Author(s):  
Olga A. Obdalova
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Skills Development ◽  
Teaching Model ◽  
Science Students ◽  
Language Resources ◽  
Efl Teaching ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Undergraduate Science

This chapter explores the contextual and linguistic potential of the content-based approach in language teaching. The first part of the analysis focuses on the theoretical underpinnings of this approach. The analysis of the cognitive-discursive activity of a non-native learner of a foreign language reveals the complex multi-level organization of cognitive-discursive activity. The author anticipates that context plays a decisive role in the processes of perception and understanding of a foreign language message embedded in a context. The second part of this chapter synthesizes research on learning outcomes in content-based EFL teaching of undergraduate science students. It deals with classroom-based research and participants' use of English taking account discourse factors, students' language resources, and didactic potential of the content-based teaching model. The findings demonstrated that the designed theme-based teaching framework proved to be more effective for science undergraduate students' speech skills development and acquisition of topic-related vocabulary.

scholarly journals Crossing Boundaries: Steps Toward Measuring Undergraduates’ Interdisciplinary Science Understanding

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. ar8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brie Tripp ◽  
Sophia A. Voronoff ◽  
Erin E. Shortlidge
Keyword(s):  
Education Reform ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Science Students ◽  
Interdisciplinary Science ◽  
Writing Assignments ◽  
Assessment Development ◽  
New Instrument ◽  
Science Understanding ◽  
Interdisciplinary Framework ◽  
Undergraduate Science

A desired outcome of education reform efforts is for undergraduates to effectively integrate knowledge across disciplines in order to evaluate and address real-world issues. Yet there are few assessments designed to measure if and how students think interdisciplinarily. Here, a sample of science faculty were surveyed to understand how they currently assess students’ interdisciplinary science understanding. Results indicate that individual writing-intensive activities are the most frequently used assessment type (69%). To understand how writing assignments can accurately assess students’ ability to think interdisciplinarily, we used a preexisting rubric, designed to measure social science students’ interdisciplinary understanding, to assess writing assignments from 71 undergraduate science students. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 25 of those students to explore similarities and differences between assignment scores and verbal understanding of interdisciplinary science. Results suggest that certain constructs of the instrument did not fully capture this competency for our population, but instead, an interdisciplinary framework may be a better model to guide assessment development of interdisciplinary science. These data suggest that a new instrument designed through the lens of this model could more accurately characterize interdisciplinary science understanding for undergraduate students.

eMentoring a Community of Early Career Researchers to Support and Enable Research Integrated Learning and Professional Skills Development for Undergraduate Medical Science Students

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Blake Cochran ◽  
Patsie Polly ◽  
Gwyn Jones ◽  
Anna Rowe
Keyword(s):  
Medical Science ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Skills Development ◽  
Science Students ◽  
Integrated Learning ◽  
Research Skills ◽  
Assessment Task ◽  
Early Career Researchers ◽  
Undergraduate Science

Undergraduate student research skills development as part of coursework is challenging. The Research Impact Symposium is an assessment task that is authentic to the discipline of pathology and medical science research within a specialist third year pathology course, Molecular Basis of Disease PATH3205. PATH3205 is offered to science undergraduates at the UNSW Sydney, Australia. This assessment task explicitly addresses the issue of research skills development by developing research practice, teamwork, communication and critical thinking skills for undergraduate science students within a community of research practice. The aims of this study were to evaluate the effectiveness of the eMentoring initiative. Specifically, to investigate research integrated learning and career development learning, to create a Medical Science Research Community and to implement the use of cloud-based communication and collaboration tools, Slack and Microsoft Teams to facilitate the eMentoring of students, as well as support the mentoring community. Key outcomes from the overall approach included mentoring and enabling early career researchers to work with undergraduate science students in mentoring their learning of research skills. Importantly, it aided in scaffolding third year undergraduate students for success in an authentic assessment task by learning and engaging with research integrated learning and career development learning.Furthermore, the shift to remote learning and teaching in 2020 presented the opportunity to develop digital literacy and professional online skills collaboratively and collegially for all members of this community: as students, early career researchers and course leads upskilled together pre-COVID-19 and in response to a rapid transition to remote learning.

scholarly journals A Study of EFL Curriculum of China’s Science and Technology Institutes under Graded Teaching Model

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Chunyan He ◽  
Fei Han
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Curriculum Design ◽  
Classification Scheme ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
English For Specific Purposes ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Teaching Model ◽  
Learning Centered ◽  
Efl Teaching

Recent years, most universities and colleges have been reforming the English as a foreign language (EFL) curriculum system in China. Some reformed EFL curriculum into English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses, for instance, while some conducted a graded teaching model in EFL teaching. However, the effect of this reform was not so good, especially at science and technology institutes. Therefore, in view of different opinions to classification of foreign language teaching, the classification scheme of English teaching was improved and rebuilt at first, based on the analysis of the learners’ feedback from the perspective of learner’s needs on the current EFL curriculum system of China’s science and technology institutes under graded teaching model. And then a new EFL curriculum system of China’s science and technology institutes under graded teaching model was designed based on learning-centered approach to course and curriculum design to promote the development of EFL teaching and China’s ESP courses and accordingly meet nation’s needs for cultivating international and integrated high-quality talents of foreign languages.

Can a tablet device alter undergraduate science students' study behavior and use of technology?

2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil P. Morris ◽  
Luke Ramsay ◽  
Vikesh Chauhan
Keyword(s):  
Web 2.0 ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Student Behavior ◽  
Controlled Study ◽  
Science Students ◽  
Web 2.0 Technologies ◽  
Use Of Technology ◽  
Tablet Device ◽  
Undergraduate Science ◽  
The Impact

This article reports findings from a study investigating undergraduate biological sciences students' use of technology and computer devices for learning and the effect of providing students with a tablet device. A controlled study was conducted to collect quantitative and qualitative data on the impact of a tablet device on students' use of devices and technology for learning. Overall, we found that students made extensive use of the tablet device for learning, using it in preference to laptop computers to retrieve information, record lectures, and access learning resources. In line with other studies, we found that undergraduate students only use familiar Web 2.0 technologies and that the tablet device did not alter this behavior for the majority of tools. We conclude that undergraduate science students can make extensive use of a tablet device to enhance their learning opportunities without institutions changing their teaching methods or computer systems, but that institutional intervention may be needed to drive changes in student behavior toward the use of novel Web 2.0 technologies.

scholarly journals Welke didactische aanpak voor vt-vertaalcolleges in het universitaire vreemdetalenonderwijs?

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 91-102
Author(s):  
Muriel Waterlot
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Foreign Language Education ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Teaching Model ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Catholic University ◽  
The University

How to approach didactically the translation classes in the university-based teaching of foreign languages? During the last decade translation in foreign language teaching has experienced renewed interest. At present, research in this area focuses not so much on the advantages and disadvantages of translation, but on the question of how it can be optimally integrated and taught in higher education. We decided to look for an answer to that question in the didactics of translation and foreign language education. The result of our study is the teaching model that we present in this article. We also demonstrate how we applied this model during the practical FL-translation classes taught to third-year undergraduate students of the programme offered by the Dutch Chair of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin where translation is taught as part of the Dutch language learning programme.

scholarly journals Investigating Undergraduate Science Students’ Conceptions and Misconceptions of Ocean Acidification

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. ar29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn I. Danielson ◽  
Kimberly D. Tanner
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Science Education ◽  
Education Research ◽  
Ocean Acidification ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Environmental Studies ◽  
Science Students ◽  
Undergraduate Biology ◽  
Undergraduate Science

Scientific research exploring ocean acidification has grown significantly in past decades. However, little science education research has investigated the extent to which undergraduate science students understand this topic. Of all undergraduate students, one might predict science students to be best able to understand ocean acidification. What conceptions and misconceptions of ocean acidification do these students hold? How does their awareness and knowledge compare across disciplines? Undergraduate biology, chemistry/biochemistry, and environmental studies students, and science faculty for comparison, were assessed on their awareness and understanding. Results revealed low awareness and understanding of ocean acidification among students compared with faculty. Compared with biology or chemistry/biochemistry students, more environmental studies students demonstrated awareness of ocean acidification and identified the key role of carbon dioxide. Novel misconceptions were also identified. These findings raise the question of whether undergraduate science students are prepared to navigate socioenvironmental issues such as ocean acidification.

scholarly journals Technology as a Source of Language Input and Practice and its Influence on the Vocabulary Development of University EFL Students

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 19-30
Author(s):  
Adela Talbi Hassani
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Vocabulary Development ◽  
Vocabulary Knowledge ◽  
Receptive Vocabulary ◽  
Language Resources ◽  
Vocabulary Size ◽  
The University

This paper addresses the extent to which technology-based language resources and tools influence the vocabulary development among University students learning English as a foreign language (EFL). The vocabulary development of 184 undergraduate students at the University of xxxxxxxx (xxxxxxx) is studied in terms of the growth of their receptive vocabulary size as well as their use of vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) across three years, and any possible correlation between this development and the use of technology is analysed. Findings reveal that for the majority of the population, the highly frequent use of multimedia tools was largely confirmed; however, for most students there was no significant correlation between the use of such resources and the growth pattern of their vocabulary knowledge. Only the low-intermediate students who had just joined the university were the exception, as their use of Internet to search for information or to communicate with others seemed to be significantly correlated to their vocabulary development. These findings have interesting implications for the classroom as they show the high potential of technology-based resources in developing vocabulary especially in environments in which English is taught as a foreign language (FL), and used only in classroom contexts. Learners appear to be "connected" enough and avid of technology based tools; however, they seem to need assistance from instructors to maximize the positive support of such tools on their language learning in general and vocabulary development in particular.

Barriers to Female Condom Use among Undergraduate Health Science Students

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bongekile T. Dlamini ◽  
Mduduzi Colani Shongwe
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Female Condom ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
Health Science ◽  
Science Students ◽  
Tertiary Institution ◽  
Health Science Students ◽  
Inadequate Knowledge ◽  
Interview Guide ◽  
Depth Interviews

The female condom (FC), also known as the femidom, has been on the market since 1993, however, its use remains limited in many parts of southern Africa, including in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland). There is a dearth of literature on the reasons for the limited use of the FC, especially from the perspective of health science students who would otherwise be expected to be knowledgeable about and have favourable attitudes to it. The aim of this study was to explore and describe the barriers to FC use among undergraduate health science students at a selected tertiary institution in Eswatini. A qualitative, exploratory descriptive study was conducted among nine conveniently sampled, unmarried undergraduate students at a selected tertiary institution in the Hhohho region in Mbabane, Eswatini. Responses to an unstructured interview guide, using in-depth interviews were analysed thematically following Creswell’s steps of qualitative data analysis. Five themes emerged from the data: (1) inadequate knowledge about the FC, (2) the FC hinders sexual pleasure, (3) insertion of the FC is time-consuming and uncomfortable, (4) the FC is bigger than the vagina, and (5) fear of being labelled “promiscuous”. Generally, the participants stated that they did not use the FC because of societal myths. Therefore, there is a need to strengthen health education campaigns for the femidom to clear the myths and misconceptions that limit its use.

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