A systemic functional analysis of multisemiotic biology texts 1

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION


The present study investigates the nature of the linguistic and visual semiotic resources
deployed in selected tertiary biology textbooks written in English. It also aims to
explore how such multimodal analyses may contribute to teaching academic English to
non-native university or college students of science and engineering, in particular the
development of academic reading skills in English. To frame this research, this
chapter discusses the nature and use of textbooks in science education (Section 1.1)
and reviews some selected approaches to the description of English used in scientific
and technological settings (Section 1.2). The chapter concludes by outlining the scope
and organization of the dissertation (Section 1.3).

1.1 Nature and Use of Textbooks in Science Education

As one of the means of imparting knowledge from one generation to another,
textbooks play a crucially important role in the socialization and educational processes
of almost all members of modern society. They are so important that many
governments of today invest heavily in the commission, publication, distribution and
evaluation of school textbooks, especially those for primary and secondary school
pupils.
In the strict sense of the term, “a textbook is a book that presents a body of
knowledge in an organized and usually simplified manner for purposes of learning.
The textbook is frequently the most important teaching tool because it can determine

1
not only what will be taught but also how it will be taught” (Langenbach 1999: 563).
Although television, videotapes, films and, in particular, computers are rivaling printed
materials of communication, “textbooks remain major resources in schools and
colleges” (1999: 563).

Although science education, especially in the industrialized countries, draws
heavily on the readily available and highly diversified laboratory facilities where
students are encouraged to perform hands-on inquiry-oriented activities in and outside
the science class, “recent studies … estimate that as much as 75% of classroom
instruction and 90% of the homework time is structured around text materials. In the
science classroom, the textbook dominates the curriculum” (Spiegel and Barufaldi
1994: 913). “Some researchers reported that the status of school science could be
summarized with one word: textbooks” (Chiang-Soong and Yager 1993: 340)
1
.
Specifically, in the first place, a science textbook introduces the students to the
world of science. It teaches them how to observe and analyze what happens around
them and thus fosters an interest in and a proper attitude towards science. This is
particularly true if the textbooks are printed and used in series, for example, secondary
school science series and junior college or senior high school chemistry, biology and
physics series. As Johns (1997: 46) observes, “[i]n many classrooms the textbook is
the chief reading source, the single window into the values and practices of a
discipline. This is particularly the case in science and technology”.
Secondly, a science textbook familiarizes students with “specialized
vocabulary, the complicated sentence structure, and the difficult concepts that
characterize higher level science writing” (DiGisi and Willet 1995: 123). It also
exposes students to non-linguistic materials, for example, pictures, diagrams, and
mathematical symbolism. According to Molitor, Ballstaedt and Mandl (1989: 5-6),

2
ever since Johann Amos Comenius’s first picture textbook Orbis sensualium pictus in
1658, “graphicness has remained a central concept in pedagogy and didactics.
Illustrations have become an indispensable component in teaching material and other
expository texts”. By reading the textbooks, the students thus learn how to decipher
the message contained in the non-linguistic material as well as in the linguistic text.

Finally, a science textbook, if properly used, can provide students with
instruction and practice in understanding science expository writing. It provides
examples or models of expository writing by which the students may improve their
writing skills.
While science textbooks are written and taught in a number of languages, in
this study I shall be concerned with introductory tertiary science textbooks written in
the English language. Such a focus on English textbooks rather than on textbooks in
other languages is primarily motivated by the growing demands from the increasing
number of non-native speakers of English around the world to read English scientific
texts. In the next section I briefly describe the importance of the English language in
international scientific and technological undertakings and survey some approaches to
the description of written scientific English.

1.2 Approaches to the Description of Written Scientific English: A Review

Since the end of the Second World War, the English language has been playing an
increasingly important role in international scientific and technological
communication. The number and importance of English-medium journals, books and
research papers continues to increase. Baldauf (1986: 221), in a study of 338 articles
published between 1978 and 1982 in four leading journals devoted to cross-cultural

3
psychology
2
, has found that “[t]hree hundred and twenty seven, or 97%, of the studies
were in English, that “all but one of these articles had an English language abstract (the
exception contained no abstract)”, and that out of the 8,489 citations provided for these
338 articles, 97% were in English. It is not just in cross-cultural psychology that
English reigns, but also in other disciplines (though in various degrees). Graddol
(1997: 9) notes that “English is now the international currency of science and

technology … the global language of experiment and discovery”. Citing Graddol
(1997), Flowerdew and Peacock (2001: 10) further observe that “[t]he international
language of research and academic publication is English and anyone who wishes to
have ready access to this material needs to know the language”. With the advent of the
computer-mediated communication in the 21
st
century, the English language is well on
its way towards a global lingua franca.
Given the increasing importance of the English language to the international
scientific and technological undertaking and the role of science and technology in
modern societies, it comes as no surprise that research into the linguistic characteristics
of English for Science and Technology (hereafter EST) has been a particularly
growing area of study. Linguists, language teachers, and science educators, under the
influence of various schools of thought, have been attempting to discover the features
of English used in scientific and technological settings. In the remainder of this
section I review some of the approaches to the description of written scientific
English
3
.

4
1.2.1 Register Analysis

Much of the early effort at the description of EST was influenced by the notion of
register. As Halliday, McIntosh and Strevens (1964: 87) note, “[l]anguage varies as its
function varies; it differs in different situations. The name given to a variety of a
language distinguished according to use is ‘register’” (see Section 2.3 for a fuller
description of the register theory). At the same time, a register displays distinctive
lexicogrammatical features. That is to say, a register is defined both semantically by
reference to the context of situation and formally by reference to the

lexicogrammatical characteristics. Scientific English is a functional variety, which
serves to construct and transmit to and for a particular audience through a particular
channel the knowledge accumulated in science and technology. Linguists in the 1960s
aimed to document the lexicogrammatical features of scientific English.
One of the earliest large-scale systematic studies of the grammatical features of
scientific English was carried out at University College London in 1964-1967 under
the direction of M. A. K. Halliday (see Huddleston et al (1968) for the final report of
the research project; see also Huddleston (1971) for “a substantially revised version”
(p. vii) of his contribution to the 1968 report). This research was heavily influenced by
the then emerging systemic framework (for a brief account of Halliday’s systemic-
functional linguistics (hereafter SFL), see Chapter Two). By reference to the register
variables of the field of discourse, the style of discourse (later to be known as “the
tenor of discourse” in Halliday (in Halliday and Hasan 1989 [1985]: 12)) and the mode
of discourse, the researchers selected 5,000 words from each of the 27 texts belonging
to specialist journals, undergraduate textbooks and popular science works in biology,
chemistry and physics. The grammatical items in the systems of TRANSITIVITY,

5
ATTRIBUTION, MOOD and so forth were studied and how frequently they occur
determined. From this information the quantitative profiles were provided.
Register analysis, or rather its frequency analysis component, has been useful
in indicating what lexical items or syntactic structures are more frequent in a certain
variety of English. The frequency analysis of the grammatical features has developed
in SFL into probability study of terms in a system (Halliday 1991; 1992; Halliday and
James 1993; Matthiessen 1999; and Nesbitt and Plum 1988). Halliday (1991: 42)
notes that “[f]requency in text is the instantiation of probability in the system. A
linguistic system is inherently probabilistic in nature”. More recently, Halliday (2003:
23-24) elaborates,

…these quantitative features are not empty curiosities. They are an

inherent part of the meaning potential of a language. An important
aspect of the meaning of negative is that it is significantly less likely
than positive; it takes up considerably more grammatical energy, so to
speak. The frequencies that we observe in a large corpus represent the
systemic probabilities of the language; and the full representation of a
system network ought to include the probability attached to each option
in each of the principal systems (…). We have not yet got the evidence
to do this; but until it can be done, grammars will not have come of age.


As far as English language, and especially EST, teaching and learning are
concerned, the results of frequency analysis can be used to help determine what items
should be given more priority in a certain teaching syllabus. As computers are
increasingly used for linguistic analysis, frequency analysis will continue to have its
place in the research community.
In retrospect, the early studies of EST had certain limitations. First, the
theoretical frameworks underlying the analyses were at the embryonic stages.
Systemic grammar, for instance, had just begun to take shape and “[s]erious work on

6
registers is even more recent in origin”, wrote Halliday, McIntosh and Strevens (1964:
98). Second, linked to the first limitation, Huddleston et al (1968) did not attempt to
account for the statistics resulting from frequency analysis; they did not relate it to the
context of situation and context of culture in which the lexicogrammatical items occur.
Thirdly, practically no attention was paid to the non-linguistic materials in the corpus,
the exception being the discussion of mathematical symbolisms used in the texts
analyzed (Huddleston et al 1968: 682-685, Appendix C). In addition, the researchers
were preoccupied with the description of the formal features of EST, rarely taking into
consideration how the results they obtained could be turned into practical and useful
input into language teaching or other fields of study.

1.2.2 Rhetorical-Communicative Approach

In this approach to EST, the focus of attention shifted from the grammatical and lexical
properties to the communicative properties of the language. In the words of
Widdowson (1979: 57), this approach “tells us what the [lexicogrammatical] forms
count as communication, how they express elements of discourse”.
As the heading “rhetorical-communicative” coined by Swales (1985: 72)
suggests, there are two sub-categories in this broad approach: the communicative,
upheld by Allen and Widdowson (1974, in Swales 1985: 73-87) (among others), and
the rhetorical, practiced by the University of Washington (Seattle) EST Program
comprising Selinker, Trimble and others (e.g. Trimble 1985).
Allen and Widdowson (1974, in Swales 1985: 75) claimed that the frequency
analysis of the formal features of EST is equivalent to treating “scientific discourse
merely as exemplification of the language system” and that “[it] does little or nothing

7
to indicate what kind of communication it is”. They suggest, therefore, that an English
course at tertiary level should aim at developing two kinds of ability in the students:

The first is the ability to recognize how sentences are used in the
performance of acts of communication, the ability to understand the
rhetorical functioning of language in use. The second is the ability to
recognize and manipulate the formal devices which are used to combine
sentences to create continuous passages of prose. (in Swales 1985: 74)


The conceptualization of the “Washington” approach to EST arose from the
members’ first-hand experience of teaching EST to non-native undergraduate
engineering students at the University of Washington (Seattle) starting in 1967. Their

teaching and research spanning 18 years is summarized in Trimble (1985). The
“Washington” school divides the total discourse (for instance, a research article) into
four interrelated rhetorical levels. By “rhetoric” and the derivative “rhetorical”,
Trimble (1985: 10) refers to the EST writer’s process of “choosing and organizing
information for a specific set of purposes and a specific set of readers”. Level A is
“[t]he objectives of the total discourse”, for example, “Detailing an experiment”,
“Making a recommendation”. Level B is “[t]he general rhetorical functions that
develop the objectives of Level A”, for example, “Stating purpose”, “Reporting past
research”. Level C is “[t]he specific rhetorical functions that develop the general
rhetorical functions of Level B”, for example, “Description”, “Definition”,
“Classification”. And Level D is “[t]he rhetorical techniques that provide relationships
within and between the rhetorical units of Level C”, for example, “Orders”, “Patterns”
(Trimble 1985: 11). As far as teaching reading skills is concerned, Trimble (1985: 13)
has found that Levels C and D deserve special attention. Trimble (1985) also discusses
the rhetorical-grammatical relationships and lexical problems in EST discourse. Of

8
particular interest, Trimble (1985: 102-113) also draws attention to the visual-verbal
relationships in EST.
Register analysis and rhetorical-communicative approach may be taken as
congruent with and complementary to each other. Both recognize the importance of
the language system: Widdowson’s “usage”, “text” and the Washington school’s
attention to lexis and grammar in EST on the one hand, and Halliday’s lexicogrammar
on the other, point to a similar (if not the same) direction. Both attach importance to
the role social context plays in language activities: Widdowson’s communicative
value, “use”, discourse, and communicative schemata, the Washington school’s
rhetoric, on the one hand, and Halliday’s context of situation and context of culture on
the other.
At the same time, the two approaches differ in their theoretical orientations.
First, register analysis is based on a theory of language and context, i.e. the systemic

theory, which stresses “the complete interconnectedness of the linguistic and the
social” (Christie and Unsworth 2000: 3), whereas the rhetorical-communicative
approach does not commit itself to a particular view of the lexicogrammar. The lexis
and the syntactic structures that the rhetorical-communicative approach attempts to
attach some communicative value to are not themselves shown to relate to each other
and form a system. For instance, in a study of the rhetorical functions of the passive as
opposed to we plus an active verb in two astrophysics journal papers, Tarone, Dwyer,
Gillette and Icke (1998: 113) propose that “we indicates the author’s procedural
choice, while the passive indicates an established or standard procedure”, but they
failed to recognize that the rhetorical “force” of a particular language form derives
from a selection from the system, in this case the system of THEME (Halliday 1994).
Secondly, register analysis in the 1960s placed the investigation of the social context

9
on the research agenda, which was later included in works such as Halliday (1978).
The rhetorical-communicative approach, on the other hand, has not tried to map the
“use” and its relation with “usage”. A summary of the overlap and complementariness
between the two major approaches to EST is given in Table 1.1.


Approach

Area of comparison


Register analysis

Rhetorical-communicative

Importance of language

items


Yes (the system)

Yes (usage)

Importance of social
context



Yes (register; context of
situation and context of
culture)

Yes (communicative
schemata)

Language as meaning
potential


Yes (system network)

No

Relationship between text
and context

Yes (Realization)

No

Table 1.1 A comparison of two approaches to EST
Key: “Yes” means that a particular approach adheres to the basic notion shown in the
area of comparison. “No” means that it does not. What is included in the bracket is
the area or areas in the approach that elaborates the basic notion.


From the Table we can appreciate a need for the two approaches to
complement each other. The systemic approach has a potential of investigating EST in
considerable detail and with considerable insight, as in Halliday and Martin (1993) and
Martin and Veel (1998). But at a particular stage of research, it may not yet be able to
provide an immediate answer to some practical problem arising, for instance, from

10
teaching EST to non-native speakers of English; the EST teachers and working
scientists and engineers may turn out to be good problem solvers. The rhetorical-
communicative approach, on the other hand, may benefit from the comprehensiveness
and depth of the systemic approach.

1.2.3 Genre Analysis

According to Johns (2002: 5-10), there are broadly three genre schools, that is the
Sydney School (introduced in Section 2.3.3), ESP (English for Specific Purposes)
School and the New Rhetoric School. Below I briefly describe the ESP School
represented most prominently by Swales (1985; 1990).
Swales (1990) is a continuation and modification of the rhetorical-

communicative approach, but with an emphasis on the text-types, or genres, in
research and academic settings. Swales (1985: 212) proposes the following definition
for “genre”:

By genre is meant a more or less standardized communicative event
with a goal or set of goals mutually understood by the participants in
that event and occurring within a functional rather than a social or
personal setting. Well-established genres are reports of laboratory
experiments, scientific papers, testimonials and job references, sermons,
cross-examinations, medical case reports and so on.


The aim of genre analysis is to investigate the conventions (social and
linguistic) associated with a particular genre and help the prospective participants,
especially the non-native speakers of English, to perform well.
Swales (1990) explicates this notion of genre and examines “research-process
genres”, such as research articles in English (in terms of the linguistic features of their

11
component parts of Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussions and Conclusions),
abstracts, research presentations, grant proposals, theses and dissertations, and reprint
requests.
Swales’s work (1985; 1990) is both theoretical and practical. It seeks to
identify the typical linguistic features of a functional component of a genre on the basis
of analysis of authentic data and relate the features to the conventions prevalent in the
research community. This may provide practical guidance to those new to the research
genre.
However, like the rhetorical-communicative approach briefly discussed above,
genre analysis (in the sense of Swales (1985; 1990)) does not seem to be founded upon
a particular coherent linguistic theory. For instance, the linguistic items that have been

studied (see Swales (1990: 131-132) for an overview of the textual studies of the
English research articles) are not related to each other in a systematic framework. It is
obvious that by explaining to a scientist or engineer in training what functional
components he or she should include in a technical report or what tense he or she
should use for a particular section of the report, Swales has given him or her invaluable
help. However, as shown in my analyses below (Chapter 4), research into the
discourse of science would be more revealing if it could be founded upon a systematic
theory of language. This may be one of the strengths of systemic-functional approach
to EST.

1.2.4 Systemic-Functional Approach to EST

Compared with the other approaches to the study of EST reviewed briefly above,
register analysis is apparently characterized by frequency analysis of particular

12
lexicogrammatical items. But frequency analysis is only one part of register theory;
another part of it is the “metafunctional hookup” between language and its context
(Halliday 1996a: 323). The technique of frequency counts and other statistical
procedures can also be applied to other disciplines, for example, economics, education,
and so on. The grammatical theory underlying the register analysis is the systemic-
functional linguistics, or SFL, known in the 1960s as category and scale grammar,
proposed by Halliday.
We need note that ever since its inception in the 1960s SFL has always been
developing, taking in new materials and enriching itself. A summary account of the
current SFL interpretation of language is presented in Chapter Two. As well, in
Chapter Two I review SFL research on grammatical metaphor in scientific English and
on important genres in science texts (e.g. Halliday and Martin 1993; Martin and Veel
1998).
It is also important to note that, inspired by O’Toole (1994) and Kress and van

Leeuwen’s (1996) extension of SFL to visual semiotics, Lemke (1998a), O’Halloran
(1996, 1999a, 1999b, 2000 and 2003), Thibault (2001), Kress et al (2001), Jewitt and
Kress (2003) and Baldry (2000a) have begun to research multimodality in science
writing and teaching. Their work in visual semiotics is incorporated in Chapter Three.

1.2.5 Science Educators’ Research on Science Textbook Articles

In addition to linguists’ and applied linguists’ efforts at EST, science educators,
particularly secondary science educators, have been paying close attention to the
various features of textbooks. For instance, they explore what types of words in
science texts cause the pupils difficulties. Summarizing major research in this area,

13
Wellington and Osborne (2001: 23) point out “non-technical words (often taken for
granted) can be at least as problematic as the technical, specialist terms of science.
Equally, the logical connectives used to link sentences and ideas can present a barrier
to the reading and understanding of science”. Besides vocabulary difficulties, Bulman
(1985: 22- 23) draws our attention to unfamiliar sentence structures, types and forms
of verbs and lack of motivating factors in science texts that may baffle the pupils. To
gauge the difficulty level of a particular science text, researchers have devised various
readability formulae including the Flesch formula and the FRY readability graph
(Wellington and Osborne 2001: 142-143).
In addition, Strube (1989) discusses the notion of style in physics textbooks.
He claims that there are four rules that govern the language of physics textbooks. The
first rule is that “the author as an individual must be distinct from the prose written; his
or her personal beliefs, attitudes, attitudes, idiosyncrasies, and personal speaking voice
must be absent”. “A second rule demands that the writer be as precise – that is,
unambiguous – as possible”. The third rule is that the discourse takes place “within a
narrow, specified context”. The fourth rule is “that of limited syntax” and suggests that
“only a limited range of sentence types will predominate in a given type of textbook”

(1989: 294; original emphasis). According to Strube, in analyzing science textbooks,
we should consider “the writer’s view of science as a discipline, and the effect of that
view on the rhetorical style of the textbook”. “In particular, the type of reasoning or
argument allowed is determined by the established methods that give validity within
science as a discipline” (1989: 294).
Unlike linguists who have begun to realize the importance of non-linguistic
resources in science, scientists and science educators have long attached great
importance to the non-linguistic elements in their work. This is obvious in the

14
abundance of diagrams, photographs, tables and graphs that appear in the textbooks,
research papers, technical manuals and the like. These non-linguistic resources have
been used to make meaning unmeanable by linguistic resources alone. Stephen Jay
Gould (1987: 18), a foremost writer on paleontology and evolution, writes:

Scholars are trained to analyze words. But primates are visual animals,
and the key to concepts and their history often lies in iconography.
Scientific illustrations are not frills or summaries; they are foci for
modes of thought.

As is clear from this brief review, research into science texts has made
considerable progress since the early 1960s. However, there are still many questions
yet to be answered as regards the multisemiotic science textbooks. In particular,
research on textbooks written for college or university students has been sparse. As
Hyland (2000: 104) points out, “[u]niversity textbooks are something of a neglected
genre; little is known about their rhetorical structure, their relationship to other genres,
or the ways in which they vary across disciplines”. Notable exceptions to this
observation include a number of recent studies, for example, Hyland’s (2000) corpus-
based study of metadiscourse in textbooks in a number of disciplines, Love’s (1991
and 1993) investigations on geology textbooks and Love’s (2002) examination of an

introductory sociology textbook. The present study will thus contribute to this
growing field of research.

15
1.3 The Scope of the Dissertation

1.3.1 Texts Selected for Analysis: Methodological Issues

Given the main purposes of the study, i.e. investigating the multimodal construction of
scientific knowledge and social identity in the science textbook and hence helping the
non-native science and engineering students to read textbooks in English, the chief
approach adopted is systemic-functional analysis of published written textbooks in
current use in English-speaking countries. For convenience of selection I chose
textbooks in current use in Singapore post-secondary educational institutions and
presumably elsewhere, judging from the places of publication, that is, UK, USA. And
due to the complexity of multimodal analysis, three texts only were selected and
analyzed (see below for details of the textbooks and excerpts). This text analysis is
accompanied by consultation with the subject instructors teaching two of the textbooks
analyzed here and by observation of the classroom teaching. This took place from July
2001 to November 2001 in the case of Essential Cell Biology: An Introduction to the
Molecular Biology of the Cell and from January 2002 to April 2002 in the case of
Organic and Biochemistry: Connecting Chemistry to Your Life.
Hyland (2000: 138) notes that, in studying the nature of the social interaction in
scientific texts, the analyst may need three types of data: “a corpus of representative
texts”, “interview transcripts from disciplinary informants” and “expert self-reports”.
My preference, however, has been directed towards the textual analysis due to the
main goals of this project. Consultation with specialist informants has therefore been
sought through email or face to face interview only when the need arises to clarify
certain points, and classroom observation has been completed in the form of

16
observation notes and of collection of worksheets and lecture notes without tape
recording or video recording what happens in the classroom.
The purpose of the research and the nature of the student population which the
research attempts to serve have dictated largely what types of texts were selected. As
noted earlier, I am attempting to improve the reading proficiency of science and
engineering university students who study English as a foreign language. For students
from P. R. China, this means I am targeting that group of students who, in addition to
the six years of high school English learning, have also completed their first two years
of university general academic English learning and presumably have passed the
Nationwide College English Test – Band 4. The nationwide A Teaching Syllabus of
College English (hereafter TSCE) (1999: 8) requires that these students continue to
read “Subject-Based English” (hereafter SBE), where the contact hours should be no
less than 100, offered in three semesters (semesters 5-7, i.e. Year 3 to Year 4). The
TSCE (1999: 5) sets out the following objectives for the development of the students’
reading ability after completion of the SBE:

The students should be able to read with ease textbooks, reference
books and other literature in English in their relevant specialties, be able
to grasp the main idea and identify major facts and relevant details. The
reading should be at a rate of 100-120 words per minute. As for the
essential literature the students should be able to understand correctly,
catch the gist and analyze it logically and critically and arrive at sound
conclusions. The speed for such reading should be 70 words per
minute. (my translation)


The texts the Chinese students are required to read for SBE should preferably
be about a specific subject area, for example, biology, chemistry and physics, and be
roughly at a junior college or first- or second-year university level in English speaking

countries (but not higher) in terms of the subject area content. That is, the texts

17
selected for Chinese students to read for their SBE course are those that have been
written for English speaking students roughly at the same age and at a slightly lower
level in terms of knowledge structure. There are several reasons for the selection of
texts of such a level. First, the Chinese students are required to have a recognition
vocabulary of only 4,200 - 5,500 words upon completion of their first two years’
general academic English learning (TSCE 1999: 2-3). Such a small vocabulary store is
not adequate for the fluent reading of specialist texts. Grabe (2002 [1995]: 280) points
out that “students in English L1 academic contexts learn an average of 40,000 words
by the end of secondary school, and learn approximately 3,000 new words each year in
school”. Such a huge gap in terms of the amount of recognition vocabulary store
between native and non-native university or college students should be taken into
account when deciding upon the level of the textbook. Secondly, Chinese students
usually do not have access to English textbooks of their specialties in these two years,
and so this exposure (at Year 3 and Year 4) will be their first experience in such
materials. These books therefore should not be too difficult from the start in terms of
the subject content. In addition, not all the topics in the English speaking country A
level textbooks, which are strongly influenced by the UK A level syllabuses in
countries like Singapore, are equally fully treated in Chinese senior high school (i.e.
junior college) education and vice versa. For example, the GCE A Level Examination
Syllabuses Biology (2002: 12) and the textbooks that it has some influence upon (for
example, Taylor et al 1997: 77-115) require that the candidates have a more detailed
understanding of the biological molecules (such as carbohydrates, lipids and proteins)
than do the Chinese Senior High School Biology Textbook (1996: 8-16) and the
syllabus it follows. In other words, this in-depth study of the biological molecules is
not required until the Chinese student is at Year 1 of his or her university life – that is,

18

only if he or she chooses to major in chemistry and biology and attends courses given
in the Chinese language by specialist instructors. The selection of A level or first- or
second-year introductory textbooks in English for the Chinese Year 3 and Year 4
science and engineering students will give them an opportunity to expand their
knowledge and skill in coping with the variety of English and other semiotic resources
employed in the English science textbooks and appreciate the differences and
similarities in terms of subject content – that is, provided the subject content is not too
difficult. If advanced level textbooks for Year 3 and Year 4 English speaking students
were used in classes for their Chinese counterparts (that is, also Year 3 and Year 4),
the latter would not be able to digest them: first because they are difficult in terms of
content and, more important, because they are difficult (or at least unfamiliar) in terms
of the language and other semiotic resources employed. In other words, the SBE is
still an exercise aiming at providing a transition from learning English for the sake of
learning to using English to solve problems in their actual study or research.
Table 1.2 gives a summary of the three texts selected. In selecting specific
textbooks for analysis, I sought the recommendation of subject instructors at the
National University of Singapore (Texts 1 and 2 in Table 1.2) and a junior college
Head of Department of Science in Singapore (Text 3) and also consulted the GCE A
Level Examination Syllabuses Biology
4
(2002: 33). The two introductory university
texts are those used in classes. Text 1 is the major reading material for second-year
biology majors for the module of Cell Biology (BL 2262) at the National University of
Singapore, and Text 2 is used by first-year students for the general education module
GEM 1516K at the same university. Excerpts were selected on the basis of conceptual
unity, either whole chapters or whole sections. For example, if the topic “atomic


19

Level

Title

Authors

Date of
publication

Publisher

Page
numbers


Topic

Text
1 for
Year
2

Essential Cell
Biology: An
Introduction to
the Molecular
Biology of the
Cell

B.
Alberts
et al

1998

Garland
Publishing,
Inc.

549-560
and 567

Cell cycle and
mitosis

Text
2 for
Year
1

Organic and
Biochemistry:
Connecting
Chemistry to
Your Life

I. Blei
and G.

Odian
2000
W.H.
Freeman
and
Company
302-329 Carbohydrates

Text
3 for
A
Level

Biological
Science 2:
Systems,
Maintenance
and Change
(3
rd
edition)

D. J.
Taylor,
et al

1997
Cambridge
University
Press

776-807
Continuity of
life

Table 1.2 Texts selected

structure” is selected, then that section or chapter dealing with the topic is selected for
analysis. I avoided, however, the first few introductory chapters of the textbooks,
because they tend to review the presumed background knowledge for the respective
course. For example, the first two chapters of Essential Cell Biology serve as a review
of and introduction to the basic (and presumed) concepts in biology and chemistry and
are not typical of the normal reading required of the student taking the course. That is,
in addition to the conceptual unity criterion, excerpts selected should also be
representative of the normal reading required of the students
5
. Below I briefly describe

20
the three texts. A sample page from each of the three texts is presented in Figures 1.1,
1.2 and 1.3.
Text 1
. The excerpt is from Chapter 17 “Cell Division” of Essential Cell
Biology (henceforth ECB), and consists of Section 1 “Overview of the Cell Cycle”,
Section 2 “Mitosis” and the “Essential Concepts” summary covering these two
sections on page 567. The topic was only briefly discussed in the module of BL2262
because the lecturer assumed that the students “may have learned it a long time ago”
(October 22, 2001). In addition, four video clips about the stages of the cell cycle were
shown to the class. The reason for such a selection is that the two sections are
conceptually connected. Section 1 “Overview of the Cell Cycle” gives an introductory
account of the four phases of the eucaryotic cell cycle, i.e. G

1
(G = gap), S (S =
synthesis), G
2
, and M (mitosis + cytokinesis) and Section 2 describes the events in
mitosis, where the nucleus of a eucaryotic cell divides into two. Clauses dealing with
cytokinesis were excluded. The materials analyzed include linguistic running text,
“Essential Concepts”, caption to the figures, and illustrations.
Although the textbook is published in one volume, it does not stand alone
because the instructor has access to a package of resources which includes: (1) ECB
Interactive, a CD-ROM, which “is a visual and aural tool that takes students beyond
the printed page. The CD-ROM in no way replaces the text; it simply enhances and
extends it by providing an extra ‘dimension’ in a way that only multimedia is able to
do”
6
; (2) Art of Essential Cell Biology, a CD-ROM, which “[c]ontains all the figures,
legends, panels and tables from the book enabling instructors to put together
individualized presentations in just a few minutes”; (3) Transparency Set, “[a] set of


21

Figure 1.1 A sample page from Text 1




22
CARBOHYDRATES 303
1O.2 MONOSACCHARIDES

Monosaccharides have one of the following structures:
[word…] [word…] [word…]
[word…] [word…] [word…]
Classification and Nomenclature
Monosaccharide names classify the compounds in two ways simultaneously, by
[word…] [word…] [word…]
Rules for naming
monosaccharides
[word…] [word…] [word…]
[word…] [word…] [word…]
Example 10.1 Classifying monosaccharides
[word…] [word…] [word…]
Solution
[word…] [word…] [word…]
[word…] [word…] [word…]
structural
formula for
aldose
structural
formula for
ketose
structural
formula 1
structural
formula 2
structural
formula 3
structural
formula 4

Figure 1.2 A sketch of a sample page from Text 2

23



(5) Transfer the root tips to a test-

[word…] [word…] [word…]


[word…] [word…] [word…]


[word…] [word…] [word…]


[word…] [word…] [word…]


[word…] [word…] [word…]


[word…] [word…] [word…]


[word…] [word…] [word…]

23.3 Mitosis

Method

The events occurring with the nucleus
(1) Place a pin through a clove of

[word…] [word…] [word…]


(2) [word…] [word…] [word…]

[word…] [word…] [word…]

[word…] [word…] [word…]
[word…] [word…] [word…]

[word…] [word…] [word…]



23.3.1 Centrioles and spindle formation

[word…] [word…] [word…]
Centrioles are organelles situated in



[word…] [word…] [word…]

[word…] [word…] [word…]

779


Figure 1.3 A sketch of a sample page from Text 3


24

154 transparencies of the most important illustrations from the book”; (4) Essential
Cell Biology Test Bank, which “provides over 500 questions of varying type and
difficulty that instructors can use for quick term-time tests or adapt for formal
examinations; and (5) Classwire, which “allows you to create your own online
teaching and learning environment centered around Essential Cell Biology”. The
instructor at the National University of Singapore also recommends that interested
students consult Molecular Biology of the Cell by Alberts et al (1994). It is also clear,
however, that ECB is the centre of the package and forms the main study material of
the course.
ECB is written for “first- or second-year undergraduates with little background
in biology” (p. v). It is designed as a “general account of cell biology” and focuses on
“the properties that are common to most eucaryotic cells and that are necessary to an
understanding of how any individual cell lives and reproduces itself” (p. v). It
emphasizes “central concepts over facts” (p. v).
This book contains nineteen chapters. Each chapter begins with a general
introduction, and in the right-hand marginalia a list of section and sub-section headings
is provided in light yellow shading to inform the reader what is to be covered in the
chapter. The introduction is followed by two to five sections. Each section is divided
into a number of sub-sections. Each chapter concludes with “Essential Concepts”,
which lists the major concepts covered in the chapter, “Key Terms”, and “Questions”.

A number of questions also appear in the right-hand marginalia at relevant points of
the running text.
This book is profusely illustrated with approximately 800 full-colour
illustrations in the 630-page text. In contrast to many tertiary science textbooks

25