Literacy

Interlocking
definitions

Technical taxonomies
http://www.primaryschoolscience.com/literacy/lit- Special expressions
connectives.php Lexical density

Syntactic ambiguity
The Use of Connectives
Grammatical
metaphor

Semantic
discontinuity
There are two main reasons why connectives introduce difficulty in
scientific writing. Firstly, they are often used to join separate sentences
together, thus, creating complex sentences. Secondly, the conjunctive The use of active and
relations between clauses can be quite complex. passive voice

The use of pronouns

Conjunctions and complex sentences
Complex sentences

The use of
Consider the sentence:
connectives

It is the job of the lungs to supply oxygen to the blood and remove carbon dioxide.

The conjunction is in bold type. The sentence contains two ideas: the lungs supply oxygen to the blood and
that they also remove carbon dioxide. We could write it as two separate sentences as follows:

The job of the lungs is to supply oxygen to the blood. The other job of the lungs is to remove carbon dioxide
from the blood.

The sentences are written as one complex sentence to avoid repetition. The desire to remove repetition has
introduced an added difficulty in that the fact that the lungs' job is to remove carbon dioxide from the blood
is now implicit. It is not made explicit where the lungs are removing carbon dioxide from. This is often the
case when conjunctions are used to link ideas together. Consider these examples:

• The circuit won't work because the wire has been connected to the glass on the bulb which is an
insulator.
• Each has adaptations that allow the animal to move to find food, avoid predators (enemies) and to
reproduce.
• The push from the elastic is greater than the air resistance and gravity, so the missile shoots away.

Taking each sentence one at a time. The first sentence could be re-written as follows:

• The circuit won't work. The circuit won't work because the wire has been connected to the glass of
the bulb. The glass of the bulb is an insulator.

In the original complex sentence, it is not obvious what the relative pronoun (acting as a connective) is
referring to. Is it saying the bulb is an insulator or is it saying that the glass is an insulator?

The second sentence could be re-written as follows:

• Each has adaptations that allow the animal to move to find food. Each has adaptations that allow
the animal to avoid predators. Each has adaptations that allow the animal to reproduce.

It is not clear from reading the original complex sentence if the adaptations that allow the animal to move
also allow the animal to escape and reproduce. It is explicit within the re-written sentence that there are
separate adaptations for each of the three abilities an animal has.

The third sentence could be re-written as follows:

• The push from the elastic is greater than the air resistance. The push from the elastic is also
greater than gravity. The missile shoots off because the push of the elastic is greater than gravity
and is greater than air resistance.
This sentence introduces the second reason why conjunctions introduce difficulties into scientific writing:

Conjunctive relations

Conjunctions also link ideas together that have consequential or temporal relationships to each other. For
example:

Relationship between
Conjunction
ideas.

The bulb doesn't light because the switch

Cause/effect
was off.

The water evaporates and then Successive

condenses.

If a light is shone on a mirror then it is

reflected. Conditional

We can find the name of the animal by

Manner
using a key

The ice-lolly melts as the temperature

Simultaneous
rises.

The sugar dissolves when placed in water. Cause/effect

The soil was waterlogged as a result of

Cause/effect
the heavy rain.

The table shows a number of sentences which contain connectives. From looking at the randomly- selected
sentences, we can see that connectives can, and do, link different ideas which have different logical
relations. The difficulty for students lies in the fact that, although the connectives have been included and
are, therefore, explicit, (they are often omitted.) the logical relationship between the items that the
conjunctions connect is not made explicit.

For example, a student has to work out that the term 'as a result' means that the relationship between
waterlogged soil and the heavy rain is one of cause and effect. i.e. the soil was waterlogged because there
was heavy rain. Or, in other words, the rain caused the soil to become waterlogged. This is seemingly a
trivial example, but, when the concepts or subject matter are unfamiliar to students these considerations
becomes more pertinent.

In another sentence, they have to work out that it is a condition that light is shone on a mirror for it to be
reflected. They have to interpret the sentence "The ice-lolly melts as the temperature rises" as meaning that
the events happen simultaneously and the rise in temperature causes the ice lolly to melt. They also have to
understand that in the sentence "The sugar dissolves when placed in water" actually means that the sugar
dissolves because it is placed in water because water is a solvent. None of these meanings are made explicit
but have to be 'recovered' from the sentences using their knowledge of grammar.

Sometimes the connectives are missed out which can lead to ambiguity because the reader has to effectively
guess the word or words that should have been there. Consider the examples below:

• The harder you hit something, the louder the noise.

• The shorter the vibrations, the higher the pitch of the note.
• The hotter the water, the more salt dissolves.
• The higher the temperature, the hotter the water.

Embedded clauses and complex sentences

Scientific writing is littered with complex sentences, many of which contain embedded clauses. Complex
sentences are sentences that contain more than one idea. These ideas are linked together with connectives

which are discussed above ( The use of connectives).

and in the section on pronouns.
Embedded clauses introduce additional difficulty for readers for a number of reasons. They function as a form
of apposition which can cause ambiguity. This is discussed above. Consider the sentences below: (The
embedded clauses are in bold type)

• Electricity travels from the power source, such as a battery, around a series of conductors, back
to the power source.
• Most cells, including plant cells, have a nucleus, a cell wall and cytoplasm.
• Opaque material, including wood, metal and stone, do not let light pass through them.

Embedded clauses are included in sentences because they ensure brevity. Also, they tend to embellish the
information in the main part of the sentence by clarifying information, giving examples or providing
information which it is not essential to include.

What these embedded clauses means for a reader is that they have to stop, mid-sentence, and realise it is
‘extra information’, then understand how it is relevant to the main sentence and, finally, finish the sentence
by connecting the first clause and the final clause or clauses. This would be a formidable task for most young
readers.

Looking back at the seven areas identified by Halliday, we realise that many are endemic to scientific writing.
We realise that scientific writing is not difficult because it contains a large amount of jargon and fancy words.
The grammar is what makes it difficult and it is this special grammar that was developed to be able to meet
the requirements of scientific knowledge. Therefore, if we want students to understand science, they must be
able understand scientific language – the two go hand in hand. Also, we do not just meet the features
identified by Halliday in the field of traditional disciplines of Biology, Physics and Chemistry. They are found,
to some extent, in almost all types of writing, so much so that we can consider ‘scientific writing’ the norm.

Unfortunately, most of the material produced to help students learn science and some of the material
produced to advise teachers on the teaching of scientific literacy recoils from confronting the difficulties
scientific writing poses. However, there are ways of helping students engage and understand scientific
writing which will be discussed in the section - "How can we help readers to understand written
scientific writing?

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