ABSTRACT

Children solve practical tasks with the help of their speech as well as their eyes and hands.

(Vygotsky, 1978)

WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE: THE WORLD OF SECONDARY SCIENCE

In the school science lab pupils meet all sorts of strange objects and devices which they will never encounter elsewhere: they meet the world of the conical flask, the pestle and mortar, the bunsen burner, the evaporating dish, the gauze and the watch glass, not to mention the pipette and the burette. To enter the lab is akin to Alice’s passage down the rabbit hole into a new world. This is equally true of pupils’ strange encounters with a new world of discourse.