High school English science vocab. question

[jbaile]

Hi,

Just a quick question. I am wondering if Korean High school students are taught science with English words. I want to do a space lesson, but I'm afraid they'll know everything already. Like they know aura borealis for example...
Anyone know?

Thanks!

[Jozigirl]

My kids do know a lot of the English terms.  The best answer to your question would be to ask a couple of your students.

[colinbro]

Hi

There are many scientific words which are shared around the world. For instance DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is used often, although the old word for "acid" (eg Korean "san") may be used.

You might have to find out obliquely. If you look at http://newyorkscienceteacher.com/sci/pages/esl/index.php and http://www.p12.nysed.gov/biling/bilinged/bilingual_glossaries.htm you will find bilingual science and math glossaries, including in Korean. You might use these to see which words and phrases are common to English and Korean.

Also there is a frequency list of nearly 60000 Korean words which includes Korean words of foreign origin. You can get this in excel format from http://www.kangmi.org/index/weblog/comments/2711/. (click on excel to get a zip file). In the excel file click the tab labelled 단어. If you sort using the C column you will be able to group all the words from a roman alphabet based language. (the first few entries will be like this, but the main group starts at around 42100 and goes to 45091) You can see words like styrofoam and cholera.

I know this is a bit of work, but it may help you with your question. I recall reading that there are many scientific words which are used in Korean, even without including over a million scientific species names.

Kind regards

[jbaile]

That's great, thank you both for your input. I'll check out those links.

Cheers!