Beyond connectors: The construction of cause in history textbooks

Achugar, Mariana; Schleppegrell, Mary J.

doi:10.1016/j.linged.2006.02.003

Cited by 72 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Linguists and educational researchers have revealed features about which students might be taught through contrastive analysis of language corpora (e.g., Biber & Reppen, 2002;Chafe & Danielewicz, 1987), evolutionary analysis of scientific language (Halliday & Martin, 1993), explorations of performances at different levels of expertise (Schleppegrell, 2001), in different academic disciplines (Achugar & Schleppegrell, 2005;Schleppegrell, 2007), and in specific genres (Halliday & Martin, 1993;Swales, 1990). Table 7.2 represents an effort to summarize this literature, by organizing the many linguistic features identified under the domains of knowledge involved in academic language in a way that makes them somewhat more tractable.…”

Section: Academic Language: An Inventory Of Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, all these linguistic features must be coordinated with at least three additional cognitive accomplishments: genre mastery (Bhatia, 2002;Swales, 1990); command of reasoning/argumentative strategies (Reznitskaya, Anderson, Nurlen, Nguyen-Jahiel, Archodidou, & Kim, 2001); and disciplinary knowledge (Achugar & Schleppegrell, 2005;Wignell, Martin, & Eggins, 1993). As students advance in their mastery of these three domains of knowledge, they learn to put features of academic language at the service of genre conventions, persuasive and clear argumentations, and disciplinaryspecific relationships and concepts.…”

Section: Academic Language: An Inventory Of Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Challenge of Academic Language

Snow¹,

Uccelli²

The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy

444

314

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Academic Language: An Inventory Of Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Academic Language: An Inventory Of Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Challenge of Academic Language

Snow¹,

Uccelli²

The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy

444

314

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Reading researchers (e.g., Trabasso and van den Broek 1985;Trabasso et al 1984;Warren et al 1979) and linguists (e.g., Noordman and de Blijzer 2000;Schleppegrell and Achugar 2003;Veel and Coffin 1996) not only agree that causation is an important ordering concept for text comprehension but that variations on causal constructions impact readers' mental representations of texts. In addition to neglecting instruction on (1) the impact of causal direction on comprehending historical texts (Noordman and de Blijzer 2000) and (2) the use of CMPs in history texts (Achugar and Schleppegrell 2005), a instructional studies also neglect to focus on implicit causal connections, such as CACs, that have been identified as troublesome for students' comprehension of history texts (Fitzgerald 2012) in history texts. In order to help all students identify, comprehend, and create sophisticated causal connections, they must be instructed in the various ways that causation is constructed.…”

Section: Causation and History Instructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An analysis of causal asyndetic constructions in United States history textbooks

Fitzgerald

2014

Functional Linguist.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Over the last three decades, an increased focus on engaging K-12 students in historical thinking has highlighted the importance of providing students with direct instruction regarding how causal relationships are formed in text. Many teachers provide this instruction by focusing on explicit causal structures, neglecting implicit forms of causation such as causal asyndetic constructions. Studies of United States history textbooks have found instances of causal asyndetic construction use, similar to the implicit constructions found in studies of spoken and written discourse. This study examines two questions: (1) Do causal asyndetic constructions occur in history textbooks with similar frequency to causal conjunctions and causal material processes? and (2) How is causal asyndetic cohesion signaled in history texts? A mixed methods analysis of two middle school and two high school textbooks demonstrates that causal asyndetic constructions are used as frequently, if not more frequently, than explicit means of expressing causation; they are signaled through authors' uses of modals, mental processes, relational processes, and verbal processes. The use of mental processes to signal causal asyndetic constructions far outnumbered other implicit signals, accounting for 58% of the total. These findings suggest that teachers need to provide students with instruction about how to identify and make meaning of causal asyndetic constructions as well as causal conjunctions and explicit processes.

show abstract

“…Although the use and prominence of certain linguistic features can vary by discipline (e.g., Achugar & Schleppegrell, 2005;Schleppegrell et al, 2004), many of the linguistic features that enable communication of complex information and abstract ideas are common across a range of academic texts in multiple disciplines.…”

Section: Appendix a Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Schleppegrell and Achugar have argued that causal connectives are not typical of academic writing but instead are more commonly used to convey logical relations in spoken interaction (Achugar & Schleppegrell, 2005;Schleppegrell, 2004). Indeed, published academic texts and texts by advanced writers are less likely to include connectives to establish causal relationships.…”

Section: Appendix a Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%