Conference talk in the symposium "Integrating Language and Science Education – Resources and Possibilities"

Metaphors are a crucial factor in students’ biological content learning as they are used to make abstract phenomena more comprehensible. Therefore, metaphors are used in biology education to support students’ learning. However, metaphors might even impede the understanding of non-native speakers: They must not be understood literally, but in a transferred sense, and the usage of metaphors differs between different languages as well as cultures. So far, it is still unclear what impact different first languages have on students’ use of metaphors with respect to their biological content learning. This study examines which metaphors students with different first languages use when talking about biological phenomena and to what extent and kind the metaphors differ. For this purpose, guided interviews with 10th grade students (15-17 years old) on two biological phenomena were conducted. As metaphors are mostly used to make abstract phenomena more comprehensible, the study compares students’ metaphor use within an abstract (immunological processes) as well as an experienceable phenomenon (decomposition of leaves). Additionally, information about students’ language biography was collected. The interviews are analysed by using a combination of two methods: First, Qualitative Content Analysis is used to structure the content of the interviews, and afterwards, the data was analysed by Metaphor Analysis to get a deeper insight into students’ metaphor use while talking about different aspects of the phenomena. Using these methods, a deeper insight into the connection between content and language was gained. Results show that students who did not experience (parts of) the phenomena (experienceable as well as abstract) tend to use metaphors used by teachers or textbooks. Furthermore, as the “war metaphor” is commonly used while talking about immunological processes, it is remarkable that some students (explicitly) tend to avoid this kind of metaphor.