A guest blog from Dr Jenny Shipway, who studied biochemistry at university and now works in science communication and education training.
The Language of Science
Words, Words, Words
One of the reasons I love biology is the wonderful language that comes with it. But learning so much new vocabularly can be a real challenge. And yes you’re going to need to learn it - both to understand the exam questions, and to communicate your answers clearly.
It helps - a lot - to use scientific language as much as possible from the very start of your studies. It might feel awkward, but fight the urge to slide into everyday speech for comfort, or to fudge the syllables of complex words. Consciously use scientific language so that it becomes a habit. And whenever possible, speak words out loud - the muscle memory will help you remember them. Using scientific language will require you to properly organise your thoughts, so being able to do this is also a great check that you really do understand a concept.
And it’s not just about remembering scientific words (although I have some tips for that below) - you will also need to know the words the examiners will use to describe what you have to do to get full marks.
Command Words
These are the words that will communicate what you need to do in exam questions. Fully understanding them will ensure you focus your efforts on the right things. However much accurate and interesting information you write down, if it’s not what the examiner was looking for then you won’t get the marks.
When you read an exam question, look out for words like these:
Evaluate: judge using available evidence
Show: provide structured evidence to reach a conclusion
Deduce: draw conclusions from the evidence provided
Find a list of useful command words here
Scientific Vocabulary
Communication is a core concept of science, and that communication has to be as clear as possible. There are a lot of scientific words that can help you achieve this clarity. But only if you use them correctly.
For example:
Accuracy / Precision: in academia, accuracy and precision are very different things. Accuracy is how close the values are to the correct value, and precision is how close they are to each other.
Repeatable / Reproducible: in science, “repeatable” means the experiment has been repeated by the same experimenter using the same equipment, and the same results were obtained. “Reproducable” means the same results are still obtained when the experiment is run by a different person, or using different equipment/techniques.
FInd a list of useful scientific vocabulary here
Jargon
Some molecules and processes have really complicated names. But they are not just random letters - they have coded meaning. When you see a new word, or need to remember one, look at it carefully and see how it breaks down. Most long biological words are constructed from coded fragments stuck together.
For example, “carbonic anhydrase” is “carbon” + “ic” + “an” + “hydr” + “ase”. What does this molecule do? Look below if you’re stuck.
Important prefixes and suffixes:
a- / an- : prefix meaning “not”. As seen in words like abiotic, anhydrase, and asexual. The “an” version is used when it goes in front of a vowel or h.
bio- : prefix meaning it’s about something living. As seen in words like biology, biochemical, biotechnology, biotic, and biomass.
cardi[o]- : prefix meaning it’s about the heart. As seen in cardiovascular, cardiopulmonary, cardiac.
cyto- : prefix meaning it’s about cells. As seen in cytoplasm, [endo/exo]cytosis, cytokinesis, cytokines.
endo- / exo- : prefixes meaning “inside / outside”. As seen in endoskeleton vs. exoskeleton; endotherm vs. exotherm; endocytosis vs. exocytosis; and endocrine vs. exocrine.
extra- : prefix meaning “outside / beyond”. As seen in extracellular, extraordinary.
glyco- : prefix meaning it’s something to do with glucose. As seen in glycolysis, glycosidic, glycogen, glycolipid and more.
hetero- / homo- : prefixes meaning “different / the same”. As seen in heterotrophic, homologous.
hydr : prefix relating to hydrogen or water. As seen in carbohydrate, hydrostatic, and carbonic anhydrase.
hyper- / hypo- : prefixes meaning “over / under”. As seen in hyperglycemia, hypothalamus and many more words.
-ase : suffix often use for enzyme names. As seen in amylase, polymerase, helicase, ligase, lactase and many more.
-in : suffix often used for protein names, no matter their function. As seen in actin, myosin, insulin, and opsonin. But keep your wits about you: not all “-in”s are proteins, for example penicillin is not.
-ic : suffix meaning “relating to”. As seen in abiotic, polymorphic, metabolic, antibiotic, genetic and many more.
-ose : suffix often used in the names of sugars. As seen in glucose, fructose and ribose. Complex carbohydrates sometimes use it - cellolose does, but starch and glycogen do not.
-some : suffix meaning “body” (ie a lump of stuff). These names are often given to things that have been spotted by use of a microscope. As seen in ribosome and chromosome. Also very often used for spheres of cell membrane: eg lysosome, acrosome and phagosome.
mono- : means one. As seen in monomer; monosaccheride, mononucleotide, monogenic,
di- : means two. As seen in dimer; dipeptide, dihydrogen oxide (water!), and many other words. But of course other words just happen to start “di-” and so you have to look at the rest of the word to be sure.
tri- : means three. As seen in trimer, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and others.
[there are other ones for higher numbers, but they are used less often]
poly- : prefix meaning many. A polymer is something made of repeated units stuck together (one unit is a monomer, two are a dimer, etc). As seen in polypeptide, polysaccharide, and polynucleotide. Also in words like polymorphic.
There are huge numbers of these word fragments - this list just contains some of the most important for A level Biology. Try to spot them as you go along - this will make it easier to remember the names of new process and molecules by relating them to their function. And maybe consider building up a bank of flashcards to help get them really stuck in your memory. If you can master these, learning new scientific jargon will be a lot easier.
Most importantly, make sure you’re not skipping over the middle bits of these words! Can you spell them from start to end? This will be a lot easier if you think about their entire structure, rather than just the beginning and end. Remember you won’t get the mark if you mess up the middle.
This is one of the reasons that speaking these words out loud helps - your brain might lie to you that you remember the middle bit, but speaking it out loud (without looking at the spelling!) is a great check for this.