Science education involves the learning-teaching of cognitive concepts-processes, states, phenomena and their properties and so on, relating to the world around us. In India a great deal of primary scientific education focuses on natural phenomena and processes that physical substances undergo. What is the role of language in science education here?

Generally, it is thought that language and Science are antithetical disciplines and that learning science has nothing to do with language. Science has to do with cognition while language has to do with expressing. In science education a minimal attention is given to the language we use.

Even so given our mode of education language plays a central role in it. Information is primarily presented in language in the textbooks. Teaching and learning occur in primarily a linguistic environment. There are linguists who have argued that language forms an integral part of cognition and knowledge gathering of the human mind.

And that language cannot be separated from the knowledge we gather. For us it is sufficient to note here that our education system stresses class room text book learning. Therefore language is central to the knowledge any learner acquires.

In cognitive learning the learners learn to 'interpret' the data they are given and proceed to generate rules.

What is the role of language in such formulations of generalisations? In the current system of learning and evaluation interpretation of such data is always mediated by language. The student is mainly exposed to data in language in the classroom and they proceed to interpret it linguistically to arrive at the laws or rules that govern these phenomena.

In a survey conducted by  Educational Initiatives (DH Education, October 18 and 25, 2007) it was found that in India a great number of students exhibit learning errors in concept formation. The example they cite is that of drying and evaporation, in which the learners in large numbers wrongly distinguished between the two.

What could be the basis or cause of such errors that learners make? To a language pedagogist the following question arises: Could it be that these kinds of errors arise mainly (if not all the time) and also due to the way language is used to speak about these concepts? To clarify further let us pursue the above example a bit further; while speaking and referring to these concepts or phenomena in everyday parlance we say

*The clothes are drying in the sun
*The bricks are drying in the kiln
*The lake dried up
*River/pond is dry after the long summer. So on, but we never say
*The clothes are evaporating in the sun
*The bricks are evaporating in the kiln
*The lake evaporated.
*River/pond has evaporated after the long summer.

Even though the underlying concept or phenomenon is evaporation of water from clothes, bricks, lakes and rivers we still do not use the word evaporate to say it. Lakes, rivers or ponds evaporate only in poetic hyperboles.

Normally they only dry up. It is surely not that the language, English, is not scientific enough and therefore gives incorrect expression to these phenomena. In fact the language is far more accurate than we would like to credit it with.

It becomes clear that linguistically we do make a distinction between drying and evaporation; and also this distinction is not unscientific. To explain: Language wise we make the distinction because drying may refer to a phenomenon which accompanies evaporation of liquids from a thing, when water evaporates from clothes, bricks, lakes, ponds and rivers they become dry.

A proper and accurate use of language therefore demands a more accurate use of ideas because clothes, bricks lakes, ponds and rivers themselves do not evaporate, but only the water in them does it. But they do dry. So more precisely drying and evaporating may be seen to be two aspects of the same process of drying/evaporation.

When the liquid evaporates the container becomes dry. Our language captures this complex phenomenon with all its aspects accurately even though the question (Is drying the same as evaporation?) posed to the learner does not require this knowledge.

One can think of other close examples such as the terms 'liquefying' and 'melting'. Learners are bound to make errors by distinguishing the two even though conceptually both refer to the process of change of state to liquid from either solid or gaseous states.

But linguistically in everyday use we may not use the word 'melting' for liquefaction of gases even though liquefy may be used in connection with solids melting. This linguistic distinction may be traced to the fact that the word 'liquefy' refers to the product obtained by the process, while 'melt' refers to the process happening to the original thing like solid in this case.

Therefore gases cannot melt but they may become liquids. But on the contrary only solids can melt as well as liquefy. This subtle distinction may not exist in the questions asked on the phenomenon of melting and liquefying.

Let us take a complicated
example:-
*Stars shine in the night sky.
*During the month of Ramadan the moon appeared in the sky at 6.
*The sun sets in the west/ The sun rises in the east.

Such linguistic expressions are bound to give rise to conceptual learning difficulties. Conceptually, shining of stars refers to the effect of them emitting light. Stars emit light all the time, day and night but we can only see them in the night.

Most precisely, therefore, stars do not shine during the day; they may be said to be emitting light but they do not shine because the sun is far brighter than any other star and so they cannot shine. More accurately in language we are referring to what we can see in the sky rather than explaining the laws behind that visual phenomenon.

Similarly, the other two examples; the moon is always in the sky; it is the earth which is rotating around its axis and the sun does not set. But linguistically in this case the reference is to the visual phenomenon relative to the viewer, rather than the actual phenomenon of the movement of the planet.

From the examples I discussed above it becomes clear that the everyday language we use to express these phenomena is far more accurate and complex than what the test questions demand. If we look at the learning pattern of a school going kid, language is always learnt first and faster than subject disciplines.

Through the language the learner already has grasped the world intuitively. In the case of the example in the article that appeared in DHEducation, the error stems from this intuitive insight that any English language user can or may have and is not an actual error in thinking.

The key to learning difficulties that arise in this manner partly lies in the way language is used in the textbook.

While writing textbooks, careful attention should be paid to relating the phenomena to the way they are expressed in language. Any complex language used to express the phenomenon should be expanded and laid bare for the learner so that s/he can generate the correct rule from the data. Further the test questions should be validated in terms of language so that they are not inadvertently ambiguous.

ENGLISH LEARNING

A point to be made is the role of English which is the medium of instruction in most cases. Considering that English is the second language, many of these learning difficulties may stem from the way learners learn English. Recent developments in English language pedagogy connect language learning with semantic, notional and functional concepts that underlie any use of language.

These semantic, notional and functional categories of language are not purely grammatical as would be the case in theories of language as purely and merely as medium, but they overlap or make up the idea content for which we use language (D . Wilkins, 1976, H Widdowson, 1984). Any pedagogist therefore should have a way of handling the role of language in learning of concepts. These linguistic concepts are key to the way in which a learner interprets the data and the way they arrive at cognitive knowledge. Thus language seems to be very much a part of the cognitive learning strategies for most learners in science education.

CONDENSATION

This becomes further clearer with a term like 'condense'. The process of 'condensation' may refer both to the phenomenon of gases becoming liquid or liquids becoming solids. In fact 'condense' like 'melt' and 'liquefy' primarily refers to a process of change of state of matter but in which the final product is denser than the original. While 'melt' and 'liquefy' do not or need not refer to the becoming of a denser state in all the cases. In the case of gases condensing to liquid 'condense' is the same as 'liquefy' but condense is not equal to melt; In fact it refers to a reverse phenomenon of melt; liquids condense to denser solids whereas solids melt to rarer liquids!