Chinese Journal of Science Education


Vol. 15 No. 2 , Pages 195 - 214 , 2007

Students’ Semantic Understanding of “Kind-of/Part-of” Discourses: An Example of the “Blood” Science Text (Article written in Chinese)

Wen-Gin YANG

Abstract

This study aimed at exploring students’ understandings on the “kind-of/part-of” discourses in science texts. The functions of science text are conventional to the readers capable of doing science, organizing information scientifically, explaining natural phenomenon, and challenging science. To organize science information, science texts oftentimes utilize “kind-of/part-of” discourses. By “kind-of/part-of” discourses the taxonomic and partonomic relations of science concepts could thus be described. For instance, “A is divided into B and C” and “A is composed of B and C” indicate that there exists “kind-of” and “part-of” relation between A and B and C, respectively. A short paragraph of “blood” excerpted from the 7th grade science text was selected, and a sixteen-item “semantic test” was developed accordingly. Total of 544 junior, senior and university students participated in this study. They were asked to read the selected excerpts and to answer the semantic test with being able to refer to the text freely. The results indicated that the readers did not make distinction of the kind-of from part-of discourses, such as “blood cells are divided into to red blood cells, white blood cells, and blood platelet” and “blood cells are composed of red blood cells, white blood cells, and blood platelet”. Readers also interpreted these discourses with multiple semantic understandings. Similarly, different patterns of taxonomic discourse affected readers’ understanding significantly. Additionally, readers encountered difficulty to understand the discourses with nominal group.

Keywords: reading comprehension; science text; kind-of/part-of discourses

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