Writing Science

Scientific writing and the literacy demands of science classrooms are the subject of this collection. Drawing on systemic functional analysis, the contributors trace how scientific discourse developed in English, and how secondary school students are gradually initiated into its conventions.

M.A.K. Halliday and J.R. Martin examine scientific language across historical, modern and cross-cultural settings. Their range runs from nineteenth-century scientific writing and the ways other cultures describe the natural world, to pupils' own accounts of scientific ideas and procedures, and to the specialised vocabulary and register found in school textbooks and classroom talk. Although many examples come from Australian schooling, the authors point out their relevance to North American education.

Throughout, the essays argue for presenting science as a more humane human enterprise, and they propose new analytical tools for critiquing scientific discourse. The book will be most useful to science and literacy educators and to educational linguists working in English.