I sent the below comments to my spouse, who is a Modern Language Department Head and is breaking into the linguistics field.
She responded as follows: (see below)
_________________________
| Forum for Physics Educators
| <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu> writes:
| >> Don't know if this is really true, but I recall someone
| saying once
| >> that the language load in an intro physics course was
| larger than the
| >> language load in an intro modern language course. If so,
| that does
| >> say something about our expectations.
| >
| >Hi Joe and all
| >
| >Might anyone know of the reference for the intriguing statement in
| >Joe's comment above? I'm planning a program with a
| >linguist/mathematician to teach calculus and physics, where we are
| >going to learn and use linguistics to help work through many of the
| >issues brought up in this very interesting thread.
|
| I don't have the reference, but I was under the impression
| that the language load referred to Biology - not Physics.
| "There is more new vocabulary in a first year Biology course
| than in a first year foreign language class."
| I am interested in seeing references as well..
|
| PL
_______________________________________
I would say that is is one of those academic myths that get passed on, like the hundred words for snow of the Esquimos (I was taught that in a linguistics class by a brilliant professor. Then, again, it was in the 1980's, and at the time it was considered the truth. I learned the details only recently).
There is a huge number of vocabulary that students need to know in a science class, and in any academic class. That is actually the big problem with teaching academic content to ESL students, or students with other types of linguistic handicap (low education and income of parents, non-standard English dialect as home language etc...). Studies show that generic academic language is even harder than discipline-specific language. But of course, the cognitive level required to understand the meaning of new Physics vocabulary in a college intro course is much higher than the level required to understand vocabulary in an introductory language book (greetings, colors, clothing, basic description etc...). Then, again, a language course is not a dictionary memorizing exercise, and understanding how things work in another language is quite a cognitive challenge in itself, as most students who don't start language study until college can attest. It is a different type of challenge, though, than understanding the difference between volts and watts, and which is harder depends on the person.
I also would not be suprised that the number of technical words you need to know in a biology course is quite high, maybe comparable to the number of words of vocabulary in a language course (although I doubt it). However, hopefully there are a number of those biology terms that have been learned (or at least the student has been exposed to them) in previous classes and by other means (just look at a PBS Kids programming for one morning!), and all those words are used in the same morphological and syntactical way as all the words the student already knows in the native language. Additionally, most of those words have lots of similarities (Latin and Greek origins, for example, and endings like -ology; -ation, etc...), and have very specific defined meanings. They don't require a whole new set of sounds, grammar, semantics, pragmatics etc...
In conclusion. I think the statement in your list-serve is an exaggeration, but it is good in the sense that it makes science professors realize the cognitive/linguistic demands of their disciplines. Whatever you teach, you are also teaching language, and if the students don't have the linguistic background to understand what is going on (and most come from high school with big deficiencies in that area) your teaching goes over their head. It is not a problem of lack of effort or intelligence on the part of the student, it is a problem of putting the cart before the horses.
Probably this is more of an explanation than you bargained for, but that is what happens when you send this kind of thing to a language professor on sabbatical. :-)