4th ESO Student's needs
Talking about the specific linguistic requirements of a student studying the last year of compulsory education, I decided to focus on the unit Chemical Reactions and Chemical Equations which corresponds to one of the most important concepts in Chemistry.
At the beginning of the unit, students are supposed to discuss what happens when we put two different chemical species together (the ones we call reactants). The debate could arise after showing them an illustrative video, in which a chemical reaction is shown. At this level, the chosen reaction needs to give strong visual changes, so they could carry out a description of what they are seeing.
Appropriate questions to make could be:
- What did you see in the first substances, in terms of color, shape, matter state...?
- Are the obtained substances different from the ones we had at the beginning?
- What changes in those characteristics can you describe?
As we see, students don't need to use a complicated nor a very specific vocabulary, they are just asked to describe changes using the same language they would use when talking with friends. Teachers should take into account that 4th-year students haven't the appropriate skills to perform a formal scientific conversation. For this reason, they should answer the previous questions with simple phrases and sentences. Hence, the main goal is to adapt the use of English or the specific foreign tongue, with the studied subject (Chemistry in our case). Once this preliminary debate is performed, teachers will introduce the specific terminology of the field. Concepts like the law of conservation of mass, bonds cleavages, combustion, fermentation reactions, exothermic and endothermic processes...
As the lectures go further, learners will be adapting and incorporating those terms to their vocabulary, so if we ask them to repeat the preliminary debate, they will be able to use those specific concepts without major issues.
The same scheme could be applied to the remaining units of the course. The basis of Physics and Chemistry is to describe the world surrounding us, in terms of how objects move (Physics) and what changes occur in the matter (Chemistry). For this reason, activities in which students could describe what they see, using basic sentences, could be performed. However, the teacher should act as a guide when required.
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Nt: The pictures have no copyright rights and have been taken from
https://www.pexels.com/es-es/
At the beginning of the unit, students are supposed to discuss what happens when we put two different chemical species together (the ones we call reactants). The debate could arise after showing them an illustrative video, in which a chemical reaction is shown. At this level, the chosen reaction needs to give strong visual changes, so they could carry out a description of what they are seeing.
Appropriate questions to make could be:
- What did you see in the first substances, in terms of color, shape, matter state...?
- Are the obtained substances different from the ones we had at the beginning?
- What changes in those characteristics can you describe?
As we see, students don't need to use a complicated nor a very specific vocabulary, they are just asked to describe changes using the same language they would use when talking with friends. Teachers should take into account that 4th-year students haven't the appropriate skills to perform a formal scientific conversation. For this reason, they should answer the previous questions with simple phrases and sentences. Hence, the main goal is to adapt the use of English or the specific foreign tongue, with the studied subject (Chemistry in our case). Once this preliminary debate is performed, teachers will introduce the specific terminology of the field. Concepts like the law of conservation of mass, bonds cleavages, combustion, fermentation reactions, exothermic and endothermic processes...
As the lectures go further, learners will be adapting and incorporating those terms to their vocabulary, so if we ask them to repeat the preliminary debate, they will be able to use those specific concepts without major issues.
The same scheme could be applied to the remaining units of the course. The basis of Physics and Chemistry is to describe the world surrounding us, in terms of how objects move (Physics) and what changes occur in the matter (Chemistry). For this reason, activities in which students could describe what they see, using basic sentences, could be performed. However, the teacher should act as a guide when required.
___________________________________________________________________
Nt: The pictures have no copyright rights and have been taken from
https://www.pexels.com/es-es/
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