Thesis (M. A. (English Studies)) --University of Limpopo, 2020 / Conventional laboratory report writing skills present an enormous challenge to first entering science students including the Bachelor of Science (BSc) students at Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University (SMHSU). First entering students are expected to meet essential tertiary discourse requirements and standards consistent with their scientific community. The purpose of this study was to explore how content lecturers in cognate departments assess laboratory report writing skills of first entering BSc students. The research design was exploratory and a mixed approach was used. Students sat for a criterion-referenced test and interviews were conducted with content lecturers to collect data; quantitative basic statistical interrogation of the basic data points and post interview analysis were performed. Some of the key findings of this exploration was that most first entering BSc students are in a dire situation regarding the laboratory report writing genre; they are unable to communicate comprehensive and intelligible information in the written laboratory reports. Thus, content lecturers and English language lecturers from the Department of Language Proficiency (DLP) need to strategically collaborate in order to improve the performance of first entering BSc students.

Vid ett laborativt arbete i undervisningen får eleverna möjlighet att samtala med varandra och dela med sig av tidigare erfarenheter, vilket har en positiv effekt på elevernas lärande. Att skriva i undervisningen har också visat sig ha en stor effekt på elevernas lärande, då de får utveckla och strukturera om sina tankar. Syftet med denna studie har varit att undersöka hur elevernas kunskap inom kemisk bindning utvecklas, samt hur elevernas språk utvecklas vid kursmoment med laborativt inslag och laborationsrapportskrivning. För att undersöka detta har kommunikationen hos fyra elever, som gick första året på gymnasiet och läste kemi, spelats in och sedan transkriberats, när eleverna genomförde och efteråt presenterade en laboration. Det här materialet tillsammans med elevernas laborationsrapporter blev sedan analyserade dels med PEA, dels med fokus på ämnesspråk och vardagsspråk. Resultatet visar att under alla delar i kursmomenten finns det ett fokus på laborationsrapporten och hur den ska skrivas där eleverna får möjlighet att utveckla sina kunskaper inom kemisk bindning samt utveckla sitt ämnesspråk. / Laboratory work in science education gives students opportunity to have a conversation and share knowledge with other classmates, which have a positive effect on students learning. To be able to communicate by writing in science education, has also been proven to have an enhanced the learning process by helping students to organized and challenged their thoughts. Therefore, this study objective is to explore how students’ knowledge about chemical bonding and their scientific language develops with laboratory work and laboratory report writing. To explore this, the communication of four students in their first year of high school, studying chemistry were recorded and later transcribed, while they performed and afterwards presented a lab. This material together with the students’ final laboratory report has been analyzed with regards to PEA and the language used by students. The study indicates that the use of laboratory report writing has helped students to develop their knowledge about chemical bonding, but also their scientific language.