Thinking Without Words
Grammar: Subjunctive
A Level 6 English lesson exploring science.
What's in this lesson
A Level 6 (proficiency) ESL lesson on science, practising subjunctive. The worksheet has a reading, target vocabulary, a grammar reference with practice and discussion questions.
From the reading: Thinking Without Words
Close your eyes and picture the number seven. Did you see a word, or something else — a shape, a colour, a position in space? For Laurent Mottron, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Université de Montréal who studies autistic perception, the question is not rhetorical. Many of the autistic mathematicians he has worked with report solving complex problems entirely in visual and spatial terms, with language arriving after the solution, as though to translate a finished thought into a form others can read. Were the Whorfian claim to hold in its strongest version — that language is the primary scaffolding of all thought — such accounts would be, as philosophers say, deeply inconvenient.
Vocabulary
- scaffolding
- synesthesia
- pre-linguistic
- embodied cognition
- image schemas
- non-verbal cognition
- conceptual framework
- paradigm shift
- numerical intuition
- scaffolds
Grammar: Subjunctive
- Literary subjunctive
- Long live the question. — subjunctive for rhetorical elevation or blessing
- Concessive /
- Though he be silent, his logic speaks. — formal, literary concession
Discussion questions
- If you lost all language overnight, what would your first thought be?
- Could you solve a maths problem in pure images, with no words at all?
- Would a world without numbers be a world without mathematics?
Thinking Without Words
Grammar: Subjunctive
What's in this lesson:
Full lesson plan with reading, grammar, vocabulary, and discussion.
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