Many students experience a language barrier in chemistry which may keep them from fully understanding and engaging in the complex chemistry content. In fact, some argue that language is a greater barrier to learning science than the content itself. Scientific language is cognitively demanding and consists of technical terminology and discourse structures specific to the context. Students struggle with understanding words in the chemical context and fail to make intended meanings. For example, words such as volatile and state are well understood in everyday life, but poorly understood in the context of chemistry. Decoding these types of terms within the context of chemistry is notably a challenging task for most students; however, for English language learner (ELL) students, the task of learning chemistry is particularly arduous. This study examined a method for mitigating the language barrier in written assessments in ways which make the questions linguistically accessible without reducing the content difficulty. The Equitable Framework for Classroom Assessment (EFCA) was implemented to modify three general chemistry assessment items on the topics of limiting reactant and percent yield. These three original items were revised for linguistic simplification and accessibility. In this presentation, ELL students' perceptions of original and modified versions of each assessment item will be discussed. Specifically, the features of the items that students found to be helpful will be reported. Results suggest that ELL students were better able to comprehend the modified versions of assessment items and use features that are less language-dependent to solve the problems.

Toward equitable assessment of English language learners in chemistry: Identifying key features in assessment items

ACS Fall 2021

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