• Question: is English important to become a scientist?

    Asked by cr4zeezoologist1 to Del, Catherine, John, Krishna, Mo Rassul on 12 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Catherine Mansfield

      Catherine Mansfield answered on 12 Mar 2014:

      I think it is. We have to write a lot of papers for publication in journals so it is important to be good at writing. Unfortunately I was not very good at English at school so this is something I had to work on when I became a scientist.

    • Photo: Muhammed Rassul

      Muhammed Rassul answered on 12 Mar 2014:

      To an extent. You need to be able to communicate with other scientists both verbally and on paper, which means using english. Obviously with the writing you can get help, but english is important.

    • Photo: John Foster

      John Foster answered on 12 Mar 2014:

      We do most of our research in the lab, but a lot of the rest of our time is spent writing about what we have done and giving talks. Being good at English is very useful for this.

      I didn’t enjoy reading and writing about fictional stories at school, but I now really enjoy reading and writing about scientific studies – I spend a lot of my free time doing this!
      So if you aren’t amazing at English at school, then you can improve lots when you are studying and writing about science!

    • Photo: Adelle Thrower

      Adelle Thrower answered on 12 Mar 2014:

      It depends on the science- the other scientists here appear to be in research so they need fairly good writing skills to write their reports and do presentations.
      I personally do not do any reporting, my job is mostly practical so English for me is not as important. I’m dyslexic so I find it difficult to do lots of reading and writing so I’ve picked a science that suits me!
      I very much agree with the other answers here- English is something that is easy to get better at after school as well as in school- so if English is not your strongest subject now it doesn’t mean it always will be.

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