English-bilingual biology for standard classes development, implementation and evaluation of an English-bilingual teaching unit in standard German high school classes
English connects all areas of science around the world. Productive and receptive English-language skills are thus a crucial tool that schools must provide their students with in order to prepare th...
Using English as the Language of Science
This article presents the development and testing of a content-based video exchange model as a motivating means to introduce lower secondary English learners to English as the language of science. The central goal was that students reach the required curricular content knowledge despite learning some of the content in a foreign language. The model was tested in German seventh-grade classes (n = 133), in which the students communicated with U.S. eighth-graders on the topic of ecology. Following field trips to a forest and a desert ecosystem, students presented and compared biotic and abiotic data in videos. The German students’ content knowledge and their motivation were assessed in a pretes…
Expert video exchanges in bilingual biology lessons - student’s intrinsic motivation and subject-specific interest
This paper presents an instructional model to incorporate English-language communication between international practicing scientists and English learners into secondary science lessons. The aim was...
The exclusive language of science? Comparing knowledge gains and motivation in English-bilingual biology lessons between non-selected and preselected classes
ABSTRACTThe dominant role of English as the global language of science entails a requirement for science teachers to equip their non-native English-speaking students with receptive and productive l...
Let's Talk Biology – Developing a Model for Incorporating English-Speaking Experts into the (Bilingual) Science Classroom
We present an instructional approach to incorporate into biology lessons an exchange of videos between international practicing scientists and secondary-school students. We validated the approach in German school settings in three curricular contexts: genetics, cell biology, and immunology. The participating students (n = 255) were native speakers of German with a background of English as a foreign language. The three participating scientists, English-speaking experts from the United Kingdom and Uganda, were rooted in different fields that were related to the respective curricular topics. We explain how the video exchange model was developed and evaluate students' comments and suggestions f…