Lexical access, knowledge transfer and meaningful learning of scientific terminology via an etymological approach

Abstract

This study aims to illustrate whether or not students of a second-year introductory Zoology course who were taught their course terminology using an etymological approach would show improved learning on a number of metrics of student performance. Undergraduate students of any academic discipline are challenged by the learning of its specialized language, especially in the terminology rich fields of scientific study. A common approach among students towards learning the terminology is via rote memorization, often with little success. Studies in language learning have shown that learning scaffolds that involve a morphological breakdown of new words into their morpheme units allows for improved lexical access, as well as greater knowledge retention and transfer abilities to other words in the same morpheme families. The scientific lexicon is mostly made up of root morphemes and is auto-descriptive, therefore, by using an etymological approach while learning new scientific terminology, there are two advantages over rote techniques: firstly to have a learning scaffold that may allow students to integrate unfamiliar terminology into their personal lexical repertoires and secondly, to have the ability to infer meaning of the terms’ properties with respect to their scientific contexts. These contributions may constitute a more meaningful student learning experience than factual intake and regurgitation and also they are allowing for metacognitive processing and conceptual linkage to the structure and/or function properties of terminology in their specialized scientific disciplines. This study adds to the growing body of teacher-led instructional learning resources for specialized vocabulary components of effective specialized scientific language learning at the University undergraduate level