The perception and experiences of teachers about language issues in the biology classroom

The key findings of this study suggests that students consider biology subject more difficult than other subjects because of the difficult language of biology. Likewise, teachers also faced adversities while teaching the different concepts of biology with structured and limited vocabulary. Some of the issues that emerged from the findings are: structured terminologies, unique way of writing, difficulty to read and pronounce the long spellings of biology. The findings reveal that one of the main problems in learning biology is the obnoxious terminology of the biology subject. Biology uses specified terminology that roots back in Latin and Old English (McComas, Reiss, Dempster, Lee, Olander, Clément, & Waarlo, 2018). Most of those terms are obscure and hard to comprehend for students. Despite having a conceptual understanding of certain topics, students still face difficulties while describing them in biological language. Most of the terms are to be remembered as they are, and there are hardly any alternate words available for those terms. The grouping of language and content of biology can improve the theoretical learning of learners (Brown & Ryoo, 2008). This makes students cram those terms and cramming vanishes after some time. Findings also explored that it is very difficult for adolescents to memorize the spelling of compound words like peptidoglycan. Though biology explains the process and systems that every individual comes across in daily life its pattern and terms are recurrent.

Moreover, this study asserted that many terms in biology that can’t be translated into the mother language (Sindhi or Urdu) of students. If teachers attempt to translate the text to the mother language of students the key terms remain the same as there are no corresponding words in local languages. However, Kauser and Shah (2019) suggested that alternative and easy terms should be used while teaching biology to resolve the issues of terminologies in the biology textbook in Pakistan. Additionaly, this research depicts that the syllabus and depth of contents are beyond the natural capacity of teenage students. Due to a large number of chapters and extensive topics teachers are unable to do just with all content. Consequently, some parts of syllabubs remained untouched or taught superficially. Moreover, the main issue which is highlighted by teachers is that textbooks lack a reasonable explanation of precise terminologies. They emphasized a textbook must carry reasonable and understandable explanations of biological terms and expressions. In contrast, Mohammad and Kumari (2007) pointed out that teachers are lacking in content knowledge and they are facing language issues to understand the textbook effectively.

Similarly, Seah (2016a) also found the same type of language issues that this study has explored. The findings of this study are consistent with Seah (2016b), who elaborated that there are three types of language issues in the biology classroom such as discipline, mode, and lexical terms. Moreover, the discipline issues reflect the nature of the different languages used in different subjects such as biology has its way to read and write like this the mathematics subjects have unique nature. So it is difficult for the students to learn different subjects in different ways. The second issue was related to the mode, which means that the different representation of the one subject. In biology, the oral, written, and symbolic modes of language entail different language features which create issues in understanding difficult concepts. The third main issue which is founded by this research is the lexical terms which mean content density with difficult terminologies. Moreover, the semantics issues were also explored in this research. Semantic issues are mainly connected with the different words and their meanings. In biology, each word has a unique meaning and that is also connected with the process. Therefore, sometimes students face difficulties while connecting scientific terminologies with their first language. Due to the weak connection between scientific vocabulary and students' mother tongue, it doesn't become challenging to memorize the spellings, definitions, and concepts.

It was also suggested by Mahmood and Iqbal (2000) that science teacher education should be improved to make science learning effective and meaningful. However, the science education situation is worse in the context of Pakistan.