Science writing in three languages: insights from two bilingual communities

Abstract

Recent research has shown that learners’ writing competence is largely grounded in integrated language repertoires. However, disciplinary and multilingual writing remains underexplored, particularly in bilingual contexts where minority, majority and foreign languages coexist. This comparative study investigates how multilingual students from two bilingual regions (the Valencian Community and the Basque Country) perform in science writing across their three languages of schooling (Catalan/Basque, Spanish and English), and how crosslinguistic relationships vary according to learners’ L1s. Drawing on data from two large-scale empirical projects (Arias-Hermoso, R. 2025. “Basque Students' Multilingual Writing of Cognitive Discourse Functions: Analysing Developmental Patterns of Disciplinary Literacies.” Doctoral dissertation, Mondragon University. https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11984/13913; Guzmán-Alcón, I. 2023. “The Effect of Intensity of Content and Language Integrated Learning Programmes on Students’ Multilingual Writing.” Doctoral Dissertation, Universitat Jaume I. https://www.tdx.cat/handle/10803/689142#page=1), over 900 primary and secondary education science texts are analysed through holistic rubrics. Results show correlations across language performances, particularly among bilingual L1 learners and in the Basque sample. Valencian students with Catalan-Spanish L1 backgrounds demonstrated the highest cross-linguistic consistency. Qualitative analyses revealed parallel discourse organisation and cohesion mechanisms. Findings evidence shared rhetorical repertoires in the three languages and advocate for integrated approaches to teaching disciplinary writing across all languages of schooling. The study contributes to multilingual education models recognising the interconnected nature of learners’ linguistic repertoires, including minority languages.