Advanced bilingual learners in science
Word level
Misunderstanding can occur with students when they are listening to teachers
or when they are reading texts:
 Ordinary words with a specific scientific meaning e.g. battery, cell,
property
 Ordinary words that can be inaccurately used e.g. force, energy, mass,
respiration
 Science specific words that are new to all e.g. transpiration, anaerobic,
osmosis
Sentence level
Difficulties for students are:
 Describing a process of several stages using the correct connectives
(see the attached sheet which has different connectives for using with
different text types)
 Using comparatives to describe patterns and shapes of graphs
Strategies to use
Using brief introductory or plenary activities, presented as games, were found
to confirm and consolidate student’s understanding. Some of these were used
by the Secondary National Strategy and can be found in the ‘Moving on with
Scientific enquiry’ materials and in the ‘Intervention’ materials. These include:
 Loop games and dominoes
 Matching sentence starts and endings
 Matching words and definitions
 Anagrams