English for Sciences, Intermediate Level, an Integrated Textbook, Third Edition

Preface
English For Science, Intermediate Level, is the second volume in the series. It is an integrated text organized around specific rhetorical functions: finding general and specific information, classifying, defining, understanding and using chronological order, determining cause and effect, comparing and contrasting, and predicting. The text is designed for university students who are studying English as a Foreign Language (EFL) at an intermediate level in order to prepare them to participate in basic science courses in English. It facilitates the leap from basic English to academic English, and it prepares students to comprehend and use science material at an intermediate level.
Unit Organization
The book emphasizes and integrates the basic skills of speaking, reading, and writing in the context of scientific academic usage. Grammar instruction – based on aspects arising from the reading passages – is restricted so as to aid consolidation of the above basic skills. The introduction of grammatical items is graded and sequenced in accordance with the principles of intermediate language acquisition.
The units are organized around the rhetorical functions used in scientific study. Each rhetorical function is introduced in a short reading passage and developed further in relevant exercises. As far as possible, reading and writing skills are introduced as they relate to the rhetorical function.
Topics have been carefully selected from the general science curriculum (biology, botany, chemistry, and physics) to serve as vehicles for presenting the rhetorical functions, syntactic constructions, and vocabulary used frequently in scientific discourse. They reflect an appropriate level of language. They are arranged in ten units. Each unit consists of a brief pre-reading exercise and an exercise on skimming or scanning. Following the reading passage itself, there are post-reading exercises that focus on important reading skills: getting the main idea; understanding the reading structure; understanding meaning from context; recognizing contextual reference; finding the topic and topic sentence; understanding general and specific ideas; understanding signal words; making an outline; understanding cause and effect, comparison and contrast, classification, inference, etc. Specific grammatical points from the reading passages lead to writing and speaking exercises.
Each unit concludes with a discussion question designed to encourage students to think about and discuss the information they have read about throughout the unit. Sometimes, however, the discussion deals with a topic from beyond the reading. Following the discussion, the students are sometimes requested to write a paragraph about the content.
The students may be familiar with the science concepts that are covered, but not know how to express them in English. The focus of the book, however, is always on language rather than science; there is no attempt to cover any scientific topic thoroughly. To use this book to advantage, no previous science knowledge is needed by teacher or student.
Contents
Preface

Acknowledgements

Unit 1 General Ideas

Unit 2 Specific Information

Unit 3 Classifying

Unit 4 Defining

Unit 5 Revision

Unit 6 Chronological Order

Unit 7 Cause and Effect

Unit 8 Comparing and Contrasting

Unit 9 Predicting

Unit 10 Revision