Cefr-aligned discourse descriptors for evaluating pre-service chemistry teachers’ written texts

An exploratory study connecting concept-comprehension and discourse-quality

Bibliographic Data

ID21196735
AuthorsRoberto Arias-Hermoso (0000-0002-0780-7320, Mondragon Unibertsitatea), Emine Adadan (0000-0002-7109-4935, Bogaziçi University), Valentina Piacentini (0000-0001-8075-8169, University of Aveiro), Y L Teresa Ting (0000-0003-2901-8194, University of Calabria)
Year2026
Publication date2026-07-02
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueApplied Linguistics Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1868-6303 • E-ISSN: 1868-6311
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/applirev-2026-0104
OpenAlexW7166887052
LanguageEN
References cited30

Since discipline-specific concepts are embedded in discipline-specific discourse, mastery of the latter becomes foundational to understanding and successfully communicating the former. While subject teachers are adept at evaluating and developing students’ concept-comprehension, they rarely gauge whether learner-discourse is developing alongside learner-comprehension of increasingly more complex content. To date, subject teachers lack language-progression frameworks for monitoring and thus planning and providing disciplinary discourse pedagogy when necessary. Collaborating through a cross-country COST Action (CLILNetLE), language and science experts developed a framework for evaluating science-discourse quality, intersecting the CEFR-framework with Cognitive Discourse Functions (CDFs) to logically bridge discipline-specific concepts with associated discourses. Working as a transdisciplinary team of language and science educators, we applied the CDF-linked CEFR-aligned framework in its current state (see Lorenzo et al. this issue) to evaluate the discourse-quality of texts which 40 pre-service chemistry teachers wrote on the topic of particle theory of matter before and after the multimodal inquiry-based instruction. The iterative process that ensued indicated how the current framework can be further improved to accommodate and integrate the perspectives and objectives of both language and science education. We describe the iterative process and provide suggestions for fine-tuning the Science-Discourse-Descriptors framework so that, by prioritising content while valuing discourse , it becomes a tool that science teachers can easily relate to and thus use for integrating the evaluation of discourse into science instruction

Action (physics) · Applied linguistics · Bridge (graph theory) · Discipline · Exploratory research · Process (computing) · Subject (documents) · Educational Strategies and Epistemologies · Science Education and Pedagogy · Second Language Learning and Teaching

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