The Difference between Chinese and American Primary School Science Textbooks in Arrangement of Knowledge

摘要

Language is not only the carrier of knowledge, but also the interpreting system of professional knowledge of different subjects. The differences in the use of language units can reflect the differences in knowledge arrangement, readability and writing ideas of textbooks. The number of linguistic units like filed words or sentences can show the amount of the knowledge to a certain degree. In this paper, we investigate the distribution of sentence amount and categories in different branches of knowledge system to reveal the discrepancy of the amount of knowledge and the compiling arrangement of knowledge content between Chinese science textbooks and the American's in the view of interpersonal function. The investigation shows that the Chinese science textbooks contain much more interrogatives and imperative sentences but less narrative sentences than the American's does. This means that the Chinese textbooks arrange too many inquiries without giving enough precise definitions and understandable interpretations of professional knowledge, increasing the difficulty of teaching and learning when teachers and students using these textbooks. In addition, when it comes to the amount of knowledge in different learning stages, the Chinese science textbooks also fail to obey the law of cognition to some extent.