English for Introducing to the Science= Английский язык: введение в наукознание

И.Н. Лазарева

ENGLISH FOR 

INTRODUCING TO 

THE SCIENCE

Учебное пособие

Рекомендовано Федеральным государственным автономным

образовательным учреждением высшего образования 

«Дальневосточный федеральный университет» (ФГАОУ ВО 

ДВФУ) к использованию в качестве учебного пособия 

для студентов магистратуры естественно-научных 

направлений подготовки

Москва

ИНФРА-М

2020

УДК 811.111(075.8)
ББК 81.432.1я73

K17

Рекомендовано Ученым советом Восточного института —

Школы региональных и международных исследований

Дальневосточного федерального университета
к печати и использованию в учебном процессе

Р е ц е н з е н т ы:
И.В. Балицкая, доктор педагогических наук, профессор кафедры 

иностранного 
языка 
и 
страноведения 
Сахалинского 
государственного 

университета;

C.М. Соболева, кандидат филологических наук, доцент кафедры 

лингвистики и межкультурной коммуникации Дальневосточного федерального 
университета

Лазарева И.Н.

Л17
English for Introducing to the Science = Английский язык: 

введение в наукознание : учебное пособие / И.Н. Лазарева. —
Москва : ИНФРА-М, 2020. — 97 с.

ISBN 978-5-16-108764-0 (online)

Содержание учебного пособия
реализуется в смысловом единстве 

совершенствования навыков устной и письменной англоязычной речи и 
воспитания академической и исследовательской культуры обучающихся. 
Методический 
аппарат 
включает 
широкий 
диапазон 
компетентностно
ориентированных заданий; материалы текущего, тематического и рубежного 
контроля. Ориентация курса на ключевые моменты теории научного познания и 
овладение академической лексикой, являющейся основой для непрерывного 
образования, позволяет адаптировать представленный материал к любым
специальностям и дает основания адресовать его тем, кому необходимо повысить 
языковую компетенцию для академических целей. 

Разработано 
в 
соответствии 
с 
требованиями 
федеральных 

государственных образовательных стандартов высшего образования последнего 
поколения к освоению образовательной программы по иностранному языку. 

Для студентов магистратуры, обучающихся по направлениям подготовки 

и специальностям «Математические и естественные науки». 

УДК 811.111(075.8)

ББК 81.432.1я73

ISBN 978-5-16-108764-0 (online)
© Лазарева И.Н., 2020

ФЗ № 436-ФЗ
Издание не подлежит маркировке 
в соответствии с п. 1 ч. 4 ст. 11

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CONTENTS

CONTENTS
3 

ПРЕДИСЛОВИЕ
4 

CHAPTER 1. WHAT IS SCIENCE?
6 

LESSON 1.  LEARNING SCIENCE
6 

LESSON 2. FIELD OF SCIENCE
12 

LESSON 3. ACTIVITIES OF SCIENTISTS
20 

CHECKPOINT (LESSONS 1 – 3)
26 

CHAPTER 2. HOW SCIENCE WORKS
27 

LESSON 4. FINDING VALUE IN THE COLLECTIVE CHARACTER OF 
KNOWLEDGE
27 

LESSON 5. SCIENTIFIC THEORY
33 

LESSON 6. UNDERSTANDING OF THE RESEARCH PROCESS
38 

LESSON 7. QUALITY SCIENCE
46 

CHECKPOINT (LESSONS 4 – 7)
52 

CHAPTER 3. SOCIO-SCIENTIFIC ISSUES
53 

LESSON 8. EXAMINING SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE
53 

LESSON 9. SCIENTIFIC CONTROVERSY
61 

PROGRESS CHECK
67 

LESSON 10. COMMUNICATING SCIENCE
68 

CHECKPOINT (LESSONS 8 – 10)
80 

ACHIEVEMENT TEST
80 

REFERENCES
84 

APPENDICES
86 

APPENDIX A.
86 

APPENDIX B.
APPENDIX C.
89 

APPENDIX D.
90 

APPENDIX E.
91 

APPENDIX F.
 

87

92

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ПРЕДИСЛОВИЕ

В ситуации взаимопроникновения наук гуманитарные науки активно 

участвуют 
в 
создании 
новой 
парадигмы 
научного 
мировоззрения 

естественных наук, а дисциплина «Иностранный язык», способна повысить 
не только практический эффект обучения, выраженный в приобретении 
новых знаний и умений, но и внести существенный вклад в формирование 
основ научного знания,
воспитание академической
грамотности 
и 

исследовательской 
культуры, 
словом, 
в
создание 
благоприятных 

предпосылок для успешной научной деятельности и профессиональной 
социализации молодых специалистов.

Цель пособия – подготовка студентов к осуществлению научной 

коммуникации 
как 
необходимого 
условия 
междисциплинарного 

взаимодействия и налаживания
эффективных научных контактов и 

плодотворного диалога между наукой и обществом. В круг задач входят 
- расширение запаса академической лексики; 
развитие когнитивно-дискурсивных умений в таких видах речевой 

деятельности, как комментирование, дефинирование, перефразирование, 
резюмирование; выдвижение
альтернативного объяснения,
построение 

аргументации собственных выводов и предложений;
углубление общенаучной подготовки магистрантов через применение 

новых представлений в ситуациях осмысления природы науки, критериев 
научности, проблем взаимодействия науки и общества.

Отличительной особенностью учебного пособия является изложение 

вопросов философии науки в тесной связи с применением интеллектуальнореалистических заданий, направленных
на подготовку студентов к 

использованию иностранного языка как важного ресурса в понимании 
сущности природы научного поиска, идентификации себя как исследователя 
в конкретной коммуникативной ситуации и выработке научного взгляда на 
природу вещей.  

Учебное пособие состоит из трѐх разделов (Chapters), включающих 10

учебных разработок (Lessons), общая логика которых задана следующими 
темами:

- понятие науки, отличия научного, околонаучного и ненаучного знания; 
- соотношение рационального и иррационального; 
- структура познавательной деятельности;
- наука как тип рациональности и проблема объективности познания; 
- общая методология естественно-научного и гуманитарного познания;
- фундаментальные нормы этики научного сообщества;

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- ответственность ученого в экономических условиях современного 

общества;

- научная коммуникация в современном социуме.
Структурно каждый урок представлен следующим образом: текст, 

предтекстовые и послетекстовые задания, секция логических и творческих 
приѐмов научно-познавательной деятельности, практические задания для 
самоконтроля, вопросы. Также, инструментальный блок включает серию 
поурочных заданий по чтению составных элементов научной статьи. В 
большинстве 
случаев 
урок 
включает 
второй 
текст, 
предлагающий 

рассмотреть изучаемое понятия на частном примере в проблемном поле 
специализации естественных наук. Для контроля уровня сформированности
соответствующих 
компетенций 
предлагаются 
задания 
тематического 

контроля после изучения каждого раздела (Checkpoints); задание по оценке 
навыков обработки научного текста (Progress check), а также материалы 
рубежного контроля после завершения курса (Achievement test). В секции 
«Приложения» представлены справочные материалы и оценочные шкалы для 
оценивания качества выполнения интеллектуально-реалистических заданий 
(summary, interview, discussion, article review, presentation).

Изложение курса опирается на аналитические обзоры и обобщения 

научной литературы, периодики, интернет-публикаций. 

Мы надеемся, что обращение иноязычного материала к вопросам 

философии науки поможет расширить узкоспециализированные границы 
обучения в зоне точных наук в сторону развития общенаучной эрудиции
магистрантов, что окажет благотворное воздействие на осмысление ими
базовых вопросов своего профессионального и жизненного самоопределения. 

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CHAPTER 1. WHAT IS SCIENCE?
__________________________________________________________________

LESSON 1.  LEARNING SCIENCE

1. Focus Text
1.1. Read the passage and develop understanding of the following overarching 
ideas of the scientific enterprise. 

 Purposes 
 Key features
 The way science functions
 Uncertainty in science
 Limits of science

Science is a process for producing knowledge. The process depends on both 

making careful observations of phenomena and on inventing theories for making 
sense out of those observations. [6] There are two very broad purposes of science 
that scientists shared across many scientific endeavors: a) gaining understanding of 
the world and b) managing the world. Great scientists make great discoveries 
because of novel and intuitive explanations of well-conducted observations. 

Are scientific ideas subject to change?
Meanwhile, scientists must be content with relative certainty about whether 

the idea is correct or not. Scientific principles institutionalize skepticism and 
prohibit the ownership of ideas. Individual scientists must keep asking themselves: 
"Are there tests or observations that will show my ideas to be incorrect?" They are 
expected to put inside pride or bias by testing their ideas, even in ways that might 
prove them wrong. Even if an individual scientist doesn't (or won't) do this, others 
will - for science proceeds as a community that is both cooperative and 
competitive. Ideas are shared, with the understanding that it is just as important to 
expose errors as it is to apply insights. When a theory or hypothesis withstands 
exhaustive testing by many independent researches, there is always a chance that 
one of the tests has hidden flaws, which would invalidate the results. That is why 
scientific papers include a section on the methods employed for the tests they 
describe. This allows other scientists to check the procedures used, even to the way 
of duplicating the research. 

Thomas Kuhn [13] added to the history of the scientific method, by 

introducing the idea of paradigms. Kuhn described a positive account of how 
sciences function. The guiding idea within Kuhn‘s positive thesis was that 
scientific work is always conducted within frameworks of beliefs, principles, 
methods and guidelines which Kuhn called paradigms. That way a scientific 
paradigm can be defined as a framework containing all the commonly accepted 

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views about a subject. Basically, these are conventions about what direction 
research should take and how it should be performed. A work that is conducted 
within a paradigm is what Kuhn calls normal science. 

Science develops
conflicting theories about how everything works. 

Experimentation would lead to one of these theories becoming dominant and 
accepted by the scientific community. A group of scientists would hold to a 
particular paradigm, often very stubbornly, until the body of evidence became so 
great that a 'paradigm shift' became unavoidable. Scientists would then adopt the 
new paradigm and begin working within its constraints, although two paradigms 
were not necessarily mutually exclusive. For example, some physicists believed 
that electrons were particles; others believed that electrons were waves. 
Eventually, physicists found that they acted as both and so the paradigms 
overlapped. Thе fact that scientists can and do change their mind when presented 
with new evidence is a strength of their profession, not a weakness.

What distinguishes science from non-scientific investigations and methods? 
Science cannot be absolutely defined. At the same time, though hard to be 

defined concisely, science has a handful of features that set it apart from other 
areas of human knowledge. A set of key characteristics as empirical evidence, 
objectivity, replication, predictability are summarized in the Science Checklist
[18]. This instrument provides a guide for what sorts of activities are encompassed 
by science.

 Science focuses on natural world
 Science aims to explain
 Science works with testable ideas
 Science relies on evidence
 Science is embedded in the scientific community 
 Scientific ideas lead to ongoing research
Use this checklist as a reminder of the usual features of science. If something 

doesn't meet most of these characteristics, it shouldn't be treated as science.

Can science provide complete answers to all questions?
Science presumes that the things and events in the universe occur in 

consistent patterns that are comprehensible through careful, systematic study. Very 
few questions are off-limits in science - but the sorts of answers science can 
provide are limited. Thus, science has limits: some questions that are an important 
part of the human experience are not answerable within the context of science and 
remain unexplained. Systematic observations, hypotheses, predictions, tests - in all 
these ways, science differs from systems of belief that are based on faith, force, 
authority, or simple consensus. Answers to such questions as ―Why do we exist, 
for what purpose?‖ are subjective. This means they come from within, as an 

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outcome of all the experiences and mental connections that shape our 
consciousness. Because individuals differ so enormously in this regard, subjective 
answers do not readily lend selves to scientific analysis. This is not to say that 
subjective answers are without value. Moral judgments, aesthetic judgments, 
decisions about applications of science, and conclusions about the supernatural are 
outside the realm of science but a shared commitment to standards for making 
judgments, however subjective those judgments might be, attempt to give meaning 
to what to do.

Today, as then, science deserves its privileged status as the most dependable 

means of acquiring knowledge and understanding. Today, as then, society has its 
sets of standards. Today, as then, those standards may be called into question when 
a new, natural explanation runs counter to supernatural belief.  The work of a 
scientist, however, is guided by one additional standard: ―The external world, not 
internal conviction, must be the testing ground for scientific beliefs.‖

1.2. Vocabulary Reinforcement.
These words are taken from the text. Form collocations used in this text. 

1. well-conducted       
a. consciousness

2. relative 
b. errors 

3. hidden 
c. one‘s mind 

4. invalidate 
d. conviction

5. scientific 
e. certainty 

6. expose 
f. paper

7. change 
g. paradigm

8. adopt 
h. results 

9. shape 
i. observations 

10. internal 
j. flaws 

1.3. Connect a key feature of a science to its description.

 Empirical evidence
 Objectivity:
 Argumentation and analysis 
 Replication:
 Predictability:

a. We should be aiming to be able to forecast the prospects predict future 

behavior from the findings of our research.

b. We should relate data and theory 

c. Researchers should try to remain totally unbiased in their investigations; 

they are not influenced by personal feelings and experiences.

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d. Data is collected through direct observation or experiment.

e. A particular method and finding can be repeated with different/same people 

and/or on different occasions, to see if the results are similar.

f. If we get the same results over and over again under the same conditions, 

we can be sure of their accuracy beyond reasonable doubt. This gives us 
confidence that the results are reliable and can be used to build up a body 
of knowledge or a theory. 

g. A process that relates data and theory includes evaluation of data quality, 

modeling, and development of new testable questions from the theory, as 
well as modifying theories as data dictates the need and, finally, scientists 
need to be able to examine, review, and evaluate their own knowledge. 

h. Does not rely on argument or belief. Instead, experiments and observations 

are carried out carefully and reported in detail so that other investigators 
can repeat and attempt to verify the work.

i. The pursuit of science implies that the facts will speak for themselves, even 

if they turn out to be different from what the investigator hoped.

1.4. Look at a checklist that summarizes key characteristics of science
(Reading 1). Examine a prototypical case of science on the Science Checklist. 
Divide the passage into sections according to the items of the Science 
Checklist. 

Atom is the fundamental particle of the natural world. It cannot be seen with the naked 
eye. Ernest Rutherford studied its organization the tools of science in the early 1900s. 
Rutherford investigated this world using alpha particles, which are helium atoms stripped 
of their electrons. He wanted to figure out what this might tell him about the layout of an 
atom. Rutherford decided to look for backscattered alpha particles. Rutherford‘s idea was 
that the positive charge and the mass of an atom were evenly distributed throughout the 
whole atom, with electrons scattered throughout. You can imagine this model of the atom 
as a loosely packed snowball (the positive mass of the atom) with a few tiny grains of 
sand (the electrons) scattered throughout. The idea that atoms are arranged in this way 
was examined by firing an alpha particle beam through a piece of gold foil. The evidence 
was assimilated. When the experimental results did not support the "snowball" model of 
the atom, instead of writing those results off as an anomaly, Rutherford modified the 
original ideas in light of the new evidence. The evidence resulting from that experiment 
was a complete surprise: most of the alpha particles passed through the gold foil without 
changing direction much as expected, but some of the alpha particles came bouncing back 

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in the opposite direction, as though they had struck something dense and solid in the gold 
foil. The deflection of alpha particles shows that the positive charge of atoms is 
concentrated in a dense mass. From this evidence, Rutherford concluded that their 
snowball model of the atom had been incorrect. The evidence suggested that an atom is 
mostly empty space and that its positive charge is concentrated in a dense mass at its core, 
forming a nucleus. Rutherford published the experimental results, a description of his 
reasoning, and the idea of the nucleus indicating that experimental results and his 
theoretical calculations did not match up perfectly. Though Ernest Rutherford came up 
with the idea that atoms have positively charged nuclei, the research that led to this idea 
was a collaborative effort: Rutherford was assisted by Hans Geiger, and the critical alphascattering experiment was actually carried out by Ernest Marsden, an undergraduate 
student working in Rutherford's lab. Furthermore, after his discovery of the layout of the 
atom, Rutherford published a description of the idea and the relevant evidence, releasing 
it to the scientific community for scrutiny and evaluation. And scrutinize they did. Niels 
Bohr noticed a problem with Rutherford's idea: there was nothing keeping the orbiting 
electrons from spiraling into the nucleus of the atom, causing the whole thing to collapse! 
Bohr modified Rutherford's basic model by proposing that electrons had set energy levels, 
which helped solve the problem and earned Bohr a Nobel Prize.

https://undsci.berkeley.edu/lessons 

1.5. Illustrate the key characteristics of the Science Checklist with the 
descriptions from the text. 

Features of  Science 
Text support

Science focuses on natural world

2. Self-test. 
Choose the correct answer. Only one answer is correct. 

1.
Which of the following is most likely to be NOT true?
A. Science is more a body of knowledge than a process of thinking.
B. Science is the process of observing, hypothesizing, testing/experimenting, 

and interpreting the results.

C. Science deals with observable, verifiable, repeatable phenomena
D. The strength of scientific position may often be evaluated by considering 

the quality of supporting data 

2.
Which characteristic is at the heart of all science? 
A. Making assumptions

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B. Inspiring research questions
C. Seeking evidence to test ideas 
D. Providing satisfying explanations

3.
The principle of objectivity means that 
A. One of the key features of a science is that personal or subjective ideas are 

eliminated 

B. All sources of bias are minimized
C. Researchers should remain totally value free when studying
D. All of the answers are correct

4.
Which of the following statements is related to the principle of replication?
A. A statement made at the beginning of an investigation is derived from a 

theory.

B. If a dramatic discovery is reported, but it cannot be replicated by other 

scientists it will not be accepted.  

C. All extraneous variables need to be controlled in order to be able to 

establish cause and effect.

D. All of the answers are correct

5.
Paradigms provide crucial guidance concerning
A. How phenomena should be investigated
B. How data should be gathered
C. What questions it is sensible to ask
D. All of the answers are correct 

6.
Which of the following can be used to support the following statement?
Scientific knowledge is provisional. 
A. Science can test hypotheses about events that happened long ago.
B. It is the job of science to collect all those plausible explanations and to use 

scientific testing to filter through them.

C. Scientists are willing to reconsider ideas if warranted by the evidence.
D. Science retains ideas that are tenuous and discards those that are not 

supported by the evidence.

7.
Understanding the nature of science can help you: 
A. Separate science from spin 
B. Identify misrepresentations of science
C. Find trustworthy sources for further information
D. All of the answers are correct

3. Maximize Your Learning: Academic Vocabulary Build-up