This study describes how EFL learners in a Japanese university worked with incoherent entities for learning scientific writing and how the assemblages of incoherent entities of "science" are shaped at the science resource center for an EFL writing course in a Japanese university. This study argues that students' entanglement with non-human entities in laboratory work is alloplastic amalgamation, shaping the assemblages of "science" at LaBo.
This study describes how EFL learners in a Japanese university worked with incoherent entities for learning scientific writing and how the assemblages (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987) of "science" are shaped from a new materialist perspective. To understand how EFL students learn scientific writing and scientific practice, this study draws on Deleuze and Guattari's concept of assemblage, which suggests a state with entanglement of humans and non-human entities (Toohey, 2018), by focusing on its alloplastic aspects (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987).
I conducted ethnographic research at a science resource center attached to an EFL writing course for first-year STEM majors in a Japanese university. The undergraduates whose L1 was Japanese had little experienced in academic writing in English and in scientific practice. The writing course aimed at developing students' writing capabilities as STEM researchers through student-centered writing projects and provided a self-access science resource center called LaBo. At LaBo, students designed and performed original hypothesis-testing experiments, and wrote their projects in English in the form of an IMRaD paper. Since students were restricted in the use of strong alkaline and acid substances for safety reasons, they used easily accessible materials including fruits, seasoning, and small living things. I collected the data from 2014 to 2018 through 158 hours of fieldwork, 20 interviews, and 33 recordings of tutorials.
This presentation features two different student groups who performed experiments with ants and bananas respectively at LaBo. The data revealed that the students struggled with controlling ants that escaped from containers and quantifying banana cells in digital photos that were randomly taken through a microscope. This study argues that students' learning activities formed alloplastic amalgamation of human bodies and senses with non-human entities, such as ants, banana cells, photos, a constant-temperature bath, and a microscope, shaping the assemblages of "science" at LaBo.
