Abstracts - Earli

What do Mexican science teachers know about the disciplines they teach?Leticia Gallegos-Cazares, CCADET-UNAM, MexicoFernando Flores-Camacho, CCADET-UNAM, MexicoAlejandra Garcia-Franco, CCADET-UNAM, MexicoEduardo Vega-Murguia, CCADET-UNAM, MexicoBeatriz Garcia-Rivera, CCADET-UNAM, MexicoRecent results in international evaluations, such as PISA (OECD, 2003), have made evident manyproblems in secondary education (ages 12-15) in Mexico. In this context, this investigation wasproposed as a way to find out what is the level of comprehension of science teachers about coreconcepts in their disciplines (physics, chemistry and biology). Questionnaires and interviews weredesigned in order to determine three different levels of comprehension about ten core concepts ineach discipline. Teachers in this study are from ten different states and are considered descriptiveof teachers in the country. Results manifest that for most teachers, comprehension does not gobeyond the first level, similar to the comprehension level students are expected to have once theyhave finished secondary school. It is possible to relate students’ poor performance in internationalevaluations with teachers’ poor understanding of basic concepts. We propose some ways in whichthis situation could be addressed.B 1328 August 2007 17:30 - 18:50Room: 0.100CPaper SessionSocial interaction in learning and instructionChair:Beatrice Ligorio, University of Bari, ItalyLearners’ pragmatic awareness: A case study with implications for second language learning andinstructionMaria Dolores Garcia-Pastor, University of Valencia, SpainResearch on second language learning and instruction has recently acknowledged and empiricallyproved in the main that pragmatic awareness has an influence in learners’ adequate performance ina second language (L2). Pragmatic awareness refers to learners’ conscious knowledge of distinctlinguistic, relational and socio-cultural assumptions operating across communicative situations andinforming determinate linguistic choices in a given language. The present research explores thepragmatic awareness of a community of Spanish learners of English as a second language (ESL)temporarily living in the U.S. as regards the formulation of the specific communicative act of‘directives’ in their first and second languages. It is believed that the enhancement of learners’pragmatic perceptions of their own language (L1) facilitates awareness-raising of the differencesand similarities between L1 and L2 pragmatics, hence pragmatic aspects in the latter. The dataused for this study includes conversational encounters conducted in learners’ first language andESL, interview data, and field notes and memos produced by the researcher as a result ofparticipant observation. Ervin-Tripp’s (1976) typology of directives and Hymes’ (1972)descriptive framework guided the analysis together with Spradley’s (1980) DevelopmentalResearch Sequence (DRS). Results of the study mainly show that learners’ directive performance– 95 –