Our vocabulary is the set of words and their meanings that we possess and are able to use. It is an instrument for verbal communication used to acquire knowledge through language, both written and oral. Our vocabulary allows us to spread information and communicate it not only to others but to ourselves. As a powerful tool that we often use to share and obtain knowledge, vocabulary, or lack thereof, will have an effect on our knowledge, but to what degree? According to the claim in the title, our vocabulary affects our ability to know to a large extent, and is capable of shaping, or in other words, confining and influencing, our knowledge and its scope. This essay will explore the validity of this claim by examining the roles and limitations of vocabulary in knowledge acquisition for different areas of knowledge, and the extent of these roles and limitations.
Although vocabulary is a useful medium for communication, it does not always communicate knowledge effectively. A single word can have so many different meanings, yet no two different words are identical. Even synonyms differ in their secondary meanings and connotations. This characteristic of vocabulary causes confusion in both communicating and receiving information, and has the power to distort and shape what we can know. Consider the framing effect in psychology, in which people alter their decisions when the presentation of identical options is manipulated in different ways such as word choice. This phenomenon has been observed in many surveys. In a study on public opinion of synthetic biology, participants showed more opposition to the field when "create" was used to describe it compared to "construct" (Pearson). Words are symbols that represent ideas in reality, yet t...
... middle of paper ...
...College London - UCL., 18 Aug. 2008. Web. 3 Sept. 2011. .
Butterworth, B. "Numerical Thought with and without Words: Evidence from Indigenous Australian Children." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105.35 (2008): 13179-3184. Web. 2 Sept. 2011. .
Matson, John. "The Origin of Zero." Scientific American. 21 Aug. 2009. Web. 1 Sept. 2009. .
Pearson, Brianna, Sam Snell, Kyri Bye-Nagel, Scott Tonidandel, Laurie J. Heyer, and A. Malcolm Campbell. "Word Selection Affects Perceptions of Synthetic Biology."Journal of Biological Engineering 5.1 (2011): 9. Web.
Woolman, Michael. Ways of Knowing: an Introduction to Theory of Knowledge. Melton, Vic.: IBID, 2006. Print.
To begin with, of the three rhetorical appeals established in Bassler’s presentation, logical appeal was the most significant. Bassler created a background for the audience in the beginning of the presentation – by giving the basic definition of a bacteria and her research – which enables the audience to connect with her. She presented a series of questions and how the quest for the answers had led her team to their discovery – quorum sensing and its manipulation. Bassler’s presentation first outlined how her team figured out how bacteria functioned, then how the bacteria communicated followed by its detailed mechanism using a molecular biology approach. Then they used their knowledge to manipulate the conversation by modifying the words that the bacteria communicated with – they created anti-quorum sensing molecules that competed with the real quorum sensing molecule. Through this, they could inhibit this communication because the anti-quorum sensing molecules stopped the real molecules from doing their work. And so, by changing ...
Kitchener, R. F. (1986) Piaget's Theory of Knowledge. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Jackson, J. P., Clements, P. T., Averill, J. B., & Zimbro, K. (2009). Patterns of knowing:
Lagemaat, Richard van de. Theory of Knowledge for the IB Diploma. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
How we approach the question of knowledge is pivotal. If the definition of knowledge is a necessary truth, then we should aim for a real definition for theoretical and practical knowledge. Methodology examines the purpose for the definition and how we arrived to it. The reader is now aware of the various ways to dissect what knowledge is. This entails the possibility of knowledge being a set of truths; from which it follows that one cannot possibly give a single definition. The definition given must therefore satisfy certain desiderata , while being strong enough to demonstrate clarity without losing the reader. If we base our definition on every counter-example that disproves our original definition then it becomes ad hoc. This is the case for our current defini...
Donald Davidson identifies three forms of knowledge which he believes to be irreducible and interdependent: knowledge of self, which is immediately known; knowledge of the outside world, which is simply caused by the events and objects around you, and thus depends on sense organs to be semi-immediately known, yet open to uncertainty; and knowledge of the minds of others, which is never immediately known. The standard approach to philosophy tries to reduce one of these forms of knowledge to one or two of the others, often leading to unanswerable questions. Davidson argues that all three varieties of knowledge are interdependent—that is, you cannot have any one without the other two. In this paper, I will primarily review Davidson’s argument of the interdependence of the three varieties of knowledge. I will then briefly discuss the plausibility of Davidson’s account and question if it truly can explain how we come to understand others’ feelings and emotions.
Vocabulary development should give the students the ability to learn the meaning of new words and concepts that are presented to them in their text. Learning this skill will help students with comprehension and their content area curriculum. By teaching students vocabulary development, students will have a reserve of new words, connect new words with their previous knowledge, gain the ability to understand and comprehend the text, and lastly, it will increase a students’ word knowledge to connect with their comprehension and success.
Weinberg, Steven. 1992. Dreams of a Final Theory: The Search for the Fundamental Laws of Nature. New York: Pantheon Books.
Macmillan, A. (2009). Numeracy in early childhood: Shared contexts for teaching and learning. Melbourne, Victoria: Oxford.
language can allow us to communicate an exact idea or to persuade others to one
To investigate the notion of numeracy, I approach seven people to give their view of numeracy and how it relates to mathematics. The following is a discussion of two responses I receive from this short survey. I shall briefly discuss their views of numeracy and how it relates to mathematics in the light of the Australian Curriculum as well as the 21st Century Numeracy Model (Goos 2007). Note: see appendix 1 for their responses.
Question No. 5 “No knowledge can be produced by a single way of knowing.” Discuss.
The study of the mental lexicon deals with how words are acquired, comprehended, organized, stored, retrieved, and produces. The term “mental lexicon” is used interchangeably with what some scholars refer to as “internal lexicon” (Bonin, 2004). It involves the different processes and activations done in the brain in order to store the words and form an internal memory which functions as a mental dictionary. Psychologist and linguists who are concerned with this study believe that words are stored in relation to their phonological, semantic, syntactic and even orthographical features.
The early acquisition of mathematical concepts in children is essential for their overall cognitive development. It is imperative that educators focus on theoretical views to guide and plan the development of mathematical concepts in the early years. Early math concepts involve learning skills such as matching, ordering, sorting, classifying, sequencing and patterning. The early environment offers the foundation for children to develop an interest in numbers and their concepts. Children develop and construct their own meaning of numbers through active learning rather than teacher directed instruction.
Lagemaat, Richard Van De. Theory of Knowledge for the IB Diploma. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005. Print.