ABSTRACT
Learning science involves learning the languages of science. Scientists listen to each other, speak, read and write to each other. They also communicate ideas in pictorial and diagrammatic form, tables and graphs. It is easy to appreciate that a language of words has a grammar and vocabulary and that specialist fields, like science, have ways of using language that are peculiar to themselves. It is less obvious that there is a vocabulary and grammar of graphs and drawings. One has to learn to ‘read’, as well as learn how to ‘write’, drawings and graphs. This is particularly true in some branches of science with their idiosyncratic diagrammatic conventions. Student teachers can forget this and may see drawings as being self-explanatory. After all we often turn to diagrams when words fail us. The aim of this chapter is to help student teachers:
• to recognize the important different modes of communication in the learning of science; • to monitor their own communications in the classroom; • to increase their effective use of communication skills.
