Linguistic resources to facilitate science education

Abstract

The present study emphasizes the need to mobilize linguistic resources to facilitate science education. In a multilingual country like India, when students opt for science education through English at any level-secondary, higher secondary or tertiary-they face the daunting task of mastering language as well as science. A study of nearly 1.5 million word corpus of science textbooks has revealed the level of lexical difficulty faced by the learners. Hence researchers have created corpus based word lists for each level on the basis of 'keyness' and 'frequency'. These could be powerful pedagogic tools to facilitate science education.