Functional Language Analysis Reflection
I found Fang and Schleppegrell’s article very informative on how to effectively ease a student’s transition from the simple and everyday language of elementary text to the more complicated language patterns observed in secondary readings. I have never been introduced to the Functional Language Analysis before, but through the examples that Fang and Schleppegrell provided I can understand how simplifying the information into feasible parts can aid in a student’s clarification and analysis of the language content.
Although I have always enjoyed reading as a hobby, I still found myself struggling as I completed my readings for class in past undergraduate courses. Reading scientific articles proved to be the hardest as most of the time it consisted of a vast amount of terminology, many of which exceeded the level an undergraduate science student was required to know. Not only were the terminologies hard to keep up with, but the sentences were structured in such long and complicated ways that I found myself reading it over and over again only to make little sense of it. It’s unfortunate I was never fully trained during the senior years of high school to prepare me for what I was expected to carry out in university readings.
To prevent my future students from having to learn the hard way that I did, I would like to implement literacy exercises in my future practices as a science teacher. In doing so, I hope my lessons will not only help them acquire a firm grip on simplifying chunks of condensed material into manageable parts, but to also aid in identifying and building on the pool of technical terms in which the science discipline consists of. I believe that timing plays a crucial role in a student’s success in developing their literacy skills. I think this development is a continuous process, stretching across their entire educational experience, and it is up to teachers to guide them along in a step by step fashion. For example, at the beginning of high school, students are expected to have mastered the language patterns presented to them in elementary text. It is now up to teachers working with them to build on this skill, through the use of language interpretation activities, to ensure that by grade 11 and 12, they will be prepared enough to comprehend and develop disciplinary literacies across their specialized subjects.
In addition, there is something I would like to clarify from this article. Mathematics is not the only discipline that evokes the usage of two different languages – natural language and symbolic language (Fang, and Schleppegrell 590). Within the general science curricula for grades 8, 9, and 10, students are also introduced to the wide range of symbols through complex concepts and equations which include, but are not limited to, α, β, Δ, and λ. Science students are also trained to acquire the skills in interpreting, organizing, and presenting a set of data in an appropriate way through the use of graphs, diagrams, or charts.