Linguistic cohesion in middle-school texts: A comparison of logical connectives usage in science and social studies textbooks

Authors

Diego Román, Southern Methodist University
Allison Briceño, San Jose State University
Hannah Rhode, University of Edinburgh
Stephanie Hironka, Mills College

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2016

Publication Title

Electronic Journal of Science Education

Volume

20

Issue Number

6

First Page

1

Last Page

19

Keywords

logical connectives, science textbooks, linguistic cohesion, reading comprehension, expository text, middle school

Disciplines

Education | Elementary Education | Language and Literacy Education | Other Education | Science and Mathematics Education

Abstract

Learning from textbooks is challenging because students must understand novel concepts while also comprehending the language used to convey those concepts. In the domain of science, one posited reason for the perceived difficulty in the reading comprehension of science texts is the low frequency of logical connectives (words that signal relationships between sentences and ideas). To test this claim and discuss its potential effects on the reading comprehension of texts used at the middle school level, this study measured whether the usage of logical connectives (e.g., therefore, so) differed between science and social studies textbooks. Our findings from a large corpus of 12 science and 12 social studies textbooks showed that science texts contained a higher rate of logical connectives than social studies texts. This main effect of subject area also interacted with grade level: The rate of logical connectives usage increased over grade levels in science but not in social studies. Our results showed further differences in the types of logical connectives used across subject areas, with science texts favoring inferential connectives (e.g., furthermore) and social studies texts favoring contrastive connectives (e.g., however). The implications of these findings for the development of science-specific literacy practices are discussed here.

Comments

This article originally appeared in Electronic Journal of Science Education, 20, 6, 2016. ©2016 Texas Christian University. This work can also be found online at this link http://ejse.southwestern.edu/article/view/15997 SJSU Users: use the following link to login and access the article via SJSU databases.

Recommended Citation

Diego Román, Allison Briceño, Hannah Rhode, and Stephanie Hironka. "Linguistic cohesion in middle-school texts: A comparison of logical connectives usage in science and social studies textbooks" Electronic Journal of Science Education (2016): 1-19.