Presenting Author University of Minnesota Rochester Rochester, Minnesota
Scientists are often criticized as being poor communicators who are unable to reach broader audiences due to confusing verbiage, awkward grammar and generally poor writing. These afflictions often translate into an inability to translate their science to others - which in turn can lead to a general skepticism of scientific dissemination. Unfortunately, these misgivings that derive from science communication issues can have wide-sweeping, real-world consequences ranging from misinterpretation of scientific findings, to misunderstanding regarding the scientific process to outright scientific misinformation. How to communicate science is an important skill that must be gained through a combination of practice and teaching. Since many aspects of science communication begin to be engrained during their undergraduate science courses, we wanted to ascertain the roots of these communication issues. We examined student’s use of language across two Anatomy and Physiology courses – one aimed at non-majors and one aimed at health science majors. Specifically, we analyzed formal written submissions form both classes to see how students use the common scientific conventions of the passive voice and nominalization.
