Zusammenfassung
In this chapter, we focus on human language which can be used to express complex, abstract ideas in physics. It discusses the question of how language relates to scientific thinking. Does language determine thinking or thinking determine language? Are language and thinking the same thing or independent, albeit closely related? An argument in favour of a separate language module is that people ...
Zusammenfassung
In this chapter, we focus on human language which can be used to express complex, abstract ideas in physics. It discusses the question of how language relates to scientific thinking. Does language determine thinking or thinking determine language? Are language and thinking the same thing or independent, albeit closely related? An argument in favour of a separate language module is that people acquire their native language intuitively and without explicit guidance, whereas abstract mathematical thinking, for example, does not develop spontaneously to such an extent. However, the native language is based on everyday experiences, whereas the understanding and communication of scientific concepts seem to require a specialised, abstract technical language for science, or scientific language, that must be learned and taught. In order to distinguish everyday language and scientific language as language registers (Halliday and Martin 1993), we discuss various factors in this chapter, for example, the contextual integration and the cognitive challenge of the object of communication, spatial, temporal and social proximity or distance of the communication partners, as well as the use of a particular vocabulary and conceptually written means of expression. This leads to a model that, in addition to everyday language and scientific language, also allows the interlinking of general academic language (language of schooling), scientific jargon and the language of teaching and learning in physics lessons. Within this model, we discuss whether the development of scientific language should be understood as a refinement of everyday language or as learning a new foreign language. In the first case, everyday language would appear as a deficient mode of scientific language, whereas in the second case, both registers are attributed an independent communicative function. Building on this, we consider the communicative function of scientific language for the acquisition of physics concepts, but conversely, also how physics content supports the formation of linguistic competences. For linking language learning and subject learning, a framework model of the Common European Framework of Reference for Language (Thürmann 2012) is presented and explained using the example of the lab report in physics education. This chapter shows that the promotion of language should be an inherent part of physics teaching.
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