You have to talk like a scientist to think like a scientist. Use the words, pronounce them more-or-less right, know how to string the words together to make coherent sentences.
Why? Because built into the words themselves are the very concepts and even arguments that clarify what the words mean and how to use them. When scientists try to describe some new structure or concept, they typically don’t make up new words by stringing random letters together. They build words out of meaningful bits and pieces, and which pieces they choose says something about which concepts the scientist thinks is important to understanding what’s going on.
Take for example megasprorangium. It’s a relatively large (mega-) container (-angium) for spores, on ferns and similar plants. Every part of the word is there to contrast the megasproangium with another structure. It’s not actually large (think on the order of 6mm), but the fact that it’s called mega- something should give you a clue that it’s contrasted with the microsporangium. It’s a sporangium, to contrast it with something called a gametangium (a container — producer, really — for gametes). It’s the -angium to make the point that it’s not the spores themselves, but the structure that surrounds them.
So, how do you learn to talk like a scientist? How do you learn how roll those technical terms and phrases off your tongue like a pizza order? You practice. Read aloud from your textbook. (You could read aloud from a scientific article, but scientists don’t actually talk the way they write when they’re trying to impress journal-article reviewers.)
Okay, but how do you read out loud when you trip over half the words in each sentence? My advice:
- Remember that your tripping is exactly what your reading aloud is supposed to rectify.
- When you come to a big technical word, don’t sound it out. Morph it out. Break it into morphemes, the meaningful units that have been strung together to make the word. Pronounce each morpheme as best as you can.
- As you say the word, try to figure out what the word means based on the morphemes. Then confirm your guess in the rest of the sentence.
- When you start morphing out words, many of the scientific morphemes may be unfamiliar with you. They won’t for long. Give yourself a few reading sessions, and soon you’ll start recognizing and automatically parsing the morphemes that are commonly used by scientists in your field.
- And don’t worry about whether you’re actually pronouncing the word wrong. All that matters is that you’ve broken down the meaning correctly. I hear scientists differing all the time on how to pronounce common scientific words — telomerase, prion, protein (old-timers sometimes say PRO-tee-in, highlighting the -in suffix which appears in specific protein names) — with no embarrassment.
Filed under: tips | Tags: concept maps, conceptual superstructure, tricks, words words words
Bio students learn a lot of definitions. It’s important and it makes sense: if you want to live in France, it makes sense to know what une baguette is, and if you want to live in Scienceland, you should know what Caenorhabditis elegans is. That does not mean, however, that students should be studying definitions as such.
Think about how scientists learn. Scientists don’t learn new areas of science by studying vocab flashcards. They just see words used in context — in articles, in lectures — and by seeing how they’re used they learn how to use them. Note that I didn’t just write: they learn what those words mean. They learn how to use the words: in what situations, and to get what ideas across.
It might be a subtle difference, but it’s useful. Scientific language is just language, and no one really uses language as simply a set of words and their meanings. Try this: define please, as in , “Please pass the ketchup.” Even if you come up with a good definition, does it convey the role that the word please plays in your daily life?
Now define hydrophobicity. A glossary or dictionary might give you something like, “the property of being water-repellent; tending to repel and not absorb water.” Okay, that definition is correct. It doesn’t, however, tell you much about what kinds of things are hydrophobic, what makes them hydrophobic, or what any of the biochemical consequences are of some molecule being hydrophobic.
A better way of understanding the word would bring up its connections to some other terms — maybe nonpolar, lipid, micelle — and some typical contexts in which the word is useful — like in explaining the importance of some transmembrane transport proteins, describing how protein folding happens, and explaining how surfactants work. Flashcards won’t do any of that. Definitions in isolation don’t help you follow the connections among concepts, and they don’t help you form associations as memory aids.
So what should you do? My favorite trick is to make concept maps. I’ll write more about concept maps in future posts, but here’s the gist:
- Write your concept terms on a piece of paper or (better, especially if you’re studying in a group) a chalkboard. Don’t write in columns and rows; spread them out at random.
- Take one pair of terms and draw an arrow from one term to the other.
- Label that arrow so that the terms and your label-words form a sentence. Example: if your arrow points from nonpolar to hydrophobic, the label should read: …molecules are…. The relationship thus reads: Nonpolar molecules are hydrophobic.
- Draw as many of these labeled arrows as make sense. Not all term-pairs will have sensical relationships, but many, many will.
As you map out the key concepts in a textbook section, you’ll find that you’re clarifying your understanding not only of each concept, but also of how it all fits together.
