Lexical Terms in the Physical Sciences: Basis for Instructional Material Production in English

Abstract

This study aimed to classify and analyze the key lexical terms and their derivations found in each two selected textbooks of Chemistry and Physics. These key lexical terms and their derivations were analyzed based on their lexical forms and meanings and further classified in the context of their linguistic levels. On the descriptive qualitative research design with emphasis on content analysis was used in this study. Key lexical terms and their derivations related to Chemistry and sub-divisions of Physics. Further, the Self-learning Module in English was prepared such that they integrated some selected key lexical terms and their derivations as were included in the list. The lesson includes reading comprehension, Speech improvement, Vocabulary Skills, Basic Sentence Pattern and Subject-Verb Agreement. The results indicated that there were 1, 458 overall total of key lexical terms including derivations in Chemistry and Physics classified into four linguistic levels. It is also found that physical science lexical terms could be integrated in the English language structure in any learning material in English using different approaches in teaching besides being very rich source of developing or increasing word power both for teachers and students. Therefore, it is recommended that collaborative or integrative teaching should be encouraged for the English and Physical Sciences considering that the disciplines are highly complementary and supplementary to each other.