14 - What’s New?

Summary

Chapter 14 opens by asking readers to produce several nouns to label an unusual object and then to describe their demonstration’s main activity in several ways. The chapter describes research with K-12 science classes showing learning boosts when concepts are taught before new terms for the concepts and that students are more interested when such terms are minimized. Jargon is the ultimate in new information, so spotting it is a critical first step toward clearer and more effective demonstrations. Strategies for jargon spotting are exemplified: words with Latin or Greek etymology (e.g., "pharyngeal"), acronyms (e.g., "SVO" for subject-verb-object), ambiguous words with both general and specialized meanings (e.g., "stress"). Many experts new to public engagement find it hard to avoid jargon. A demonstration on syntactic ambiguity shows that it can even be done with esoteric or abstract topics. Thus, while jargon is one of the tools of science, incomplete is not incorrect. The Worked Example discusses an online text editor’s markup of a draft sentence. This chapter’s Closing Worksheet asks readers to aim such an editor to the written support for their demonstration.