How does the linguistic demand of scientific texts impact English language learner’slearners’ understanding of science at a higher level?
The language of science itself presents challenges for any student in a science class, due to the linguistic demand of the scientific text. The challenge of understanding the language of the text is greater among English language learners because they are still in the process of developing their social language or Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) (Baker, 2011). All of my current ELLs have been in the US for less than two years. All of the subjects of my study are still developing their social language, while they are just entering in the early stages of Cognitive Academic Language Skills (CALP). While science teachers focus on solely on teaching the science content to fluent English-speaking students, their ELL counterparts need to extend beyond the content. These ELLs need an ample opportunityample opportunities to read, listen, write, and speak English. (Corder, 2007).