Content-Area Variations
Time and time again this course surprises me. I never realized how important it is to focus on language in the courses we teach. So often in the biology world I feel so removed from the realm of language and rules of punctation etc (which is generally evident in a lot of undergraduate research papers). Yet when I reflect on my language use in biology I realize how different it is in comparison to how I write essays, or blogs, or letters or anything for that matter. I definitely take my language repertoire I have gained over my 5 years in biology. Scientific speech is extremely difficult to follow, very descriptive and highly subject-specific. I personally, with a background in evolution, find a molecular genetics or a biochemical paper extremely difficult to read versus an ecology based paper on angiosperm coevolution. The fact of the matter is, whether you’ve studied science, math, history, languages, art or any other course, you yourself are very familiar with your subjects vocabulary and you take for granted the time you have personally put into gaining this vocabulary and your ability to use this language in a professional and even social context.
It is for this reason that we must be so conscious of how we use our own “language” while teaching. I remember to this day, a very specific subject we were covering in high school biology. It was on genetic transfer between species over generations. I was so hopelessly lost! The teacher went on and on about this homozygous male breeding with this heterozygous female and they produce a mixture of blah blah blah. It wasn’t until second year university when I finally understood this concept in full and looking back on myself and thinking man I was dumber than a sack of hammers. However the main point to this story is that, you can’t learn a subject without first learning how to apply the vocabulary.
This course is opening my eyes to the great need of focusing learning on the language of science. At first it seems like its a lot of extra work in an already very busy curriculum, but i believe with the right attention and focus it will actually encourage your students, giving them confidence and a foundation to work off and flourish. Like beautiful little butterflies hatching from cocoons hahaha.