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Commentary: Introducing the language of biochemistry

Students in my sophomore Introduction to Biochemistry class read a series of classic research articles published over the past century and a half that deal with hemoglobin [1–3]. Each article constitutes a problembased learning (PBL) problem that students, working in groups with a peer facilitator, must understand in some detail before going on to the next article (problem). For most students, their initial encounter with an article in a scientific journal overwhelms them with terms and concepts they do not know or have forgotten. They must generate a list of ‘‘learning issues,’’ a series of questions constructed to address their knowledge gaps and then attempt to resolve some of them before they come to class to discuss them in their groups. Without fail, questions of the form, ‘‘What does X mean?,’’ where ‘‘X’’ is some unknown word, appear commonly in the first list of learning issues that students generate. In many cases, it appears that students ‘‘read’’ through the article looking for words they do not understand and make little effort to find a dictionary, look at a textbook, or go online to find definitions despite instructions to do so. When they do seek out a definition, often it means little to them and they have trouble relating it to the context of an article, which they do not understand. Their approach seems rather superficial. They have no idea how much effort they need to put in before they understand. I want them to get beyond definitions quickly and get into the substance of the articles, but they cannot do that without understanding the vocabulary. I have no magic approach to changing study habits, but I have attempted to give students an experiential perspective on the task by making them realize that like science, many areas of common knowledge depend on specialized language. Although I use the following jargon-laden group quiz about the sport of baseball, other realms of every day life such as restaurant menus, automobiles, or politics could serve as well. WHO SAYS OBSCURE LANGUAGE AND SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE ARE PROBLEMS UNIQUE TO THE SCIENCES?