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Re: [Fhsst-bio] What level to pitch the content at
From: |
Mark Horner |
Subject: |
Re: [Fhsst-bio] What level to pitch the content at |
Date: |
Mon, 23 May 2005 19:36:02 -0700 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050509 Debian/1.7.6-1ubuntu2.1 |
Hi Nicole and Nicky (Nix G and Nix K :)
That looks fine to me. I just have a few general comments.
For the physics book I adopted the following policy:
* include everything the syllabus mentions
* if there seems to be content missing in the syllabus add it - we won't
be responsible for gaps in education and its possible that a
strong/interested student would read additional material as well
* a survey (I'll find the ref) showed that a large number of science
teachers in SA feel uncomfortable with their own grasp of the content so
we should keep in mind that we can write something which may help the
teachers with their own understanding
* we must have everything a student needs to know before starting at
university, for physics I really assume
they know nothing and work up to what they need to start university
* it must be accessible to second language English speakers starting
from age 16.
I think the same should apply to the Biology book.
I hope that our books would be good enough that a dedicated student
without a great teacher in a rural school who is prepared to put in the
time (and has the required talent) can use our texts to pass matric well
enough to embark on a successful university career. That is my ultimate
objective - make the necessary resources available.
As far as second language accessibility goes, the key is to keep
sentences short and simple. I really had no idea about how they would
rate content but after spending a class with the HDE students at UCT it
basically (at least one type of test) came down to average number of
syllables per sentence. I imagine biology has much more terminology than
physics (at least in high school) so this could be tough but introduce
terms and concepts as slowly as possible with as much explanation as
possible. In the Physics book I have let the language become slightly
more advanced in the later chapters. We felt that over the course of the
book (3 years) the student should progress somewhat and if they are
going to university it will be more complicated.
I hope that doesn't muddy the waters. Nicole is a qualified teacher and
so she might have some stern words for me but thats the approach we
(read I) adopted for Physics.
Cheers,
Mark
Graeme & Nicole wrote:
Hi there Nicky
As for what level to pitch it at, why not use the UK websites for
their curricula - they're roughly equivalent - e.g.
http://www.aqa.org.uk/qual/pdf/AQA-5411-6411-5413-6413-W-SP-05.pdf and
http://www.aqa.org.uk/qual/pdf/AQA-5416-6416-W-SP-05.pdf
If you want to see other specifications, go to AQA's home page, then
click on qualifications, GCE AS/A2, then on the drop down
specification menu, choose whatever you're interested in.
Alternatively, you could try the OCR website - slightly different
content, but again, will give you a rough guide as to the level to
pitch it at.
However, remember that we're writing for ESL readers!!! While trying
to get the content level right (and not dumbing down too much),
remember not to use too much unexplained jargon, and to use diagrams
wherever possible.
Hope that helps.
Nicole
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