At the present time, the use of English language by undergraduate University students is not only a means to access knowledge, but also a communication tool to participate in European international mobility programs. In the first case, the active participation of students involved in the Bologna process demands the use of English academic texts and on-line resources, especially in areas that experienced a great terminological and conceptual evolution during the last years, such as cell and tissue biology. Although Spanish students have received a progressive improvement of their formation in English language in primary and secondary school during the last 20 years, the influence of such as formation on the acquisition of competences in the use of scientific terms has not been analyzed to date.
In the present work, we have evaluated the capability to identify English scientific terms in a group of Spanish undergraduate students at the moment of entering the University of Granada. Briefly, 80 students were selected at the moment of their incorporation to the University of Granada, and two different test forms were presented to the students. In the first test, two types of English texts with two different levels of specialization selected from a cell biology and histology book were used: the first text was related to general cell biology (general scientific text) and the second one was related to osteomalacia and mineralization in bone (specific scientific text). Both texts consisted of identical number of words (36), and the students had to highlight those terms that they were not able to translate and, therefore, to understand. The objective of this part of the study was to determine if the formation received by the students enabled them to properly identify English scientific terms and whether or not the identification was more accurate for one type of text than for the other one (general or specific text). The second test was a questionnaire in which the students had to define some general concepts and terms such as “what is a mammal?” or “what is a bird?”, for example, and some specific cytological concepts such as “what is a mitochondria?” or “what is a prokaryotic cell?”, among others.
Our results showed that students highlighted an average of 4±1.93 words in the first text of the first test, and 2.5±1.41 words in the second text. Regarding the second questionnaire, only 19.6% of the general items were properly answered by the students, whereas 74.7% of the specific questions were correctly defined. The results of this second test show that the formation received by the students is strikingly better in specific areas of cell and tissue biology in comparison with general biology, given that this latter should be the main objective of primary and secondary school. These results are also in agreement with the capability of the students to translate a specialized scientific text in English language instead of a more general biological text.
All these data suggest that, when the subjects of cell and tissue biology and English language are taught in primary and secondary school, there is a trend to focus on specialized concepts and terms rather than on general ones. The necessity and opportunity for a reformulation of the objectives of teaching activities in primary and secondary school, at least in these areas of knowledge and capabilities, should be considered.