Re: [Fhsst-bio] What level to pitch the content at

[Mark Horner]

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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