Exploring ESL Secondary School Students' Scientific Writing: A Case Study of English-medium Secondary School Students in Hong Kong

International research has shown that many English as a second language (ESL) students do not fully benefit from the exposure to English provided in their English-medium classrooms, partly due to their low proficiency in English. In Hong Kong, although some ESL students pass the English threshold level and are admitted to English-medium instruction (EMI) junior secondary schools, they still face serious challenges when communicating abstract concepts in their second language. ESL science students in particular are criticised for their limited writing proficiency, the primary means of knowledge dissemination in the science field. These students experience a gap between their potential to meet international standards for science achievement and their weak ability to communicate scientific knowledge in English. This gap is particularly noticeable for ESL science students who studied at Chinese-medium primary schools and switched to EMI at the secondary level.  The proposed 3-year project will explore the scientific writing ability of these students and determine whether their degree of EMI exposure positively affects their scientific writing development through a comparison of grades and EMI school types. To obtain multifaceted evidence, the project will have the following aims. 1) To evaluate science students' general scientific report writing ability and linguistic skills 2) To explore the discourse features of students' scientific writing. 3) To identify the pedagogical tools and instructional methods used by science teachers. 4) To understand teachers' perceptions of EMI teaching. At least 240 junior secondary students will be recruited. A 1-year longitudinal naturalistic exploratory approach will be adopted. Each student participant will be invited to produce a scientific report on the same topic after 1 year of study at their junior secondary school. The produced reports will be marked by trained markers to assess the organisation of the text and the use of lexico-grammatical features of effective science writing (e.g. unpacking dense information, connecting ideas logically, tracking participants and themes). In addition, the instructional activities of the participating science teachers will be analysed using natural classroom observations. The teachers' perceptions of EMI teaching will also be explored in interviews. The project will provide an overview of the effects of EMI exposure on the scientific writing of junior secondary students in the Hong Kong context and result in 1) a profile of ESL science students' writing competence, and 2) a set of implications for teaching science in the EMI junior secondary context.