You Can Understand the Science and Still Get Lost in the English
Why learning chemistry in another language is not the same as learning chemistry again
Knowing the science and being able to communicate the science are two different abilities.
— Tymur Levitin
A student looks at a chemical equation.
They recognize it immediately.
They understand the reaction.
They know what happens and why.
Then they look at the English question underneath it.
And suddenly the chemistry becomes difficult.
Not because the reaction changed.
Not because the student forgot chemistry.
Not because their scientific reasoning disappeared.
The language changed.
This distinction seems simple.
But it has enormous consequences for students who study chemistry, biochemistry, medicine, pharmacy and other sciences in a language that is not their strongest one.
Sometimes the problem is chemistry.
Sometimes the problem is English.
And sometimes the real difficulty is the bridge between them.
The Formula May Be Familiar. The Question May Not Be.
Scientific notation travels remarkably well across languages.
H₂O remains H₂O.
NaCl does not become a different compound when a student crosses a border.
The periodic table does not reorganize itself because the textbook is now written in English.
A chemical equation may look completely familiar.
But everything around it changes.
Calculate.
Determine.
Compare.
Explain why.
Describe the mechanism.
Predict the products.
Evaluate the result.
Suddenly the learner is solving two problems at once.
The scientific problem.
And the linguistic problem through which the scientific problem has been presented.
That second problem can make the first one look much harder than it really is.
Scientific English Is More Than Terminology
It is tempting to reduce the problem to vocabulary.
Learn:
chemical reaction
acid
base
organic compound
solution
mixture
protein
enzyme
metabolism
Certainly, terminology matters.
Without the relevant words, scientific communication becomes impossible.
But knowing the terminology is not the same as being able to operate scientifically in English.
A student may know the words enzyme and reaction rate and still struggle to explain:
The enzyme increases the reaction rate without being consumed in the process.
They may understand the idea perfectly.
The difficulty is constructing the relationship between those ideas in English.
Science does not live in nouns alone.
It lives in relationships.
Cause and effect.
Conditions.
Changes.
Comparisons.
Processes.
Evidence.
Hypotheses.
Consequences.
Scientific English must make those relationships visible.
You May Know the Concept Before You Know Its English Name
Imagine a student who already understands acids and bases.
The concepts are not new.
They understand pH.
They recognize neutralization.
They know what happens when an acid reacts with a base.
Now they encounter:
acid-base reaction
neutralization
hydrogen ion concentration
aqueous solution
The English terminology has somewhere to go.
It attaches to an existing conceptual structure.
That is very different from learning four disconnected expressions from a vocabulary list.
The learner is not trying to create meaning from the English word.
The meaning already exists.
English is acquiring access to it.
This is the same broader principle we explored in You Already Know More German Than You Think:
https://timurlevitin.blogspot.com/2026/08/you-already-know-more-german-than-you.html
Existing knowledge can become infrastructure for a new language.
But Chemistry Creates a More Complex Problem
Chemistry takes this principle further.
A learner does not merely need to name objects.
They need to describe transformations.
Consider the difference between knowing these terms:
reactant
product
temperature
reaction rate
and being able to explain:
Increasing the temperature generally increases the reaction rate because particles collide more frequently and with greater energy.
The scientific concept may already be familiar.
But communicating it requires grammatical and logical structures:
increasing...
because...
more frequently...
with greater...
The language is carrying scientific reasoning.
This is why scientific English cannot be reduced to a bilingual glossary.
A Student Can Know Chemistry and Fail an English Chemistry Task
This creates an important educational problem.
Suppose a student gives an incomplete answer on a chemistry test conducted in English.
What failed?
Their chemistry?
Their English?
Their interpretation of the instruction?
Their ability to formulate the explanation?
We cannot know merely by looking at the incorrect answer.
This connects directly with a principle we recently explored in A Student's Language Level Is Not Their Knowledge Level:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/students-language-level-knowledge-f1xlf
Before deciding what to teach, we need to identify what is actually missing.
That diagnosis matters even more in scientific subjects because language and reasoning are tightly intertwined in the final response.
Three Students Can Need Three Completely Different Lessons
Imagine three students struggling with the same biochemistry material.
Student One Knows the Biochemistry
They understand proteins, enzymes and metabolism.
But the English textbook is difficult.
This student primarily needs language access.
Scientific vocabulary.
Reading strategies.
Ways to explain processes.
Language for cause, consequence and comparison.
Student Two Knows the English
They can read the textbook comfortably.
The vocabulary is not the problem.
But they do not understand enzyme kinetics.
This student needs biochemistry.
Teaching more English would not solve the actual problem.
Student Three Needs Both
They are learning the scientific concepts while also developing the English required to understand and discuss them.
This student needs Language + Knowledge.
The three learners may appear equally confused.
They should not receive the same lesson.
This Is Why We Teach the Subject Itself
There is an important distinction in our approach at Levitin Language School.
We do not treat chemistry merely as an interesting source of English vocabulary.
If the learner needs chemistry, we can teach chemistry.
If they need English for chemistry, we can work with scientific English.
If they need both, the two can develop together.
This is especially important at university level.
Organic chemistry cannot be reduced to terminology.
Neither can physical chemistry.
Biochemistry certainly cannot.
A student studying proteins, metabolism, molecular structures or pharmaceutical chemistry needs genuine conceptual understanding.
Language supports that understanding.
It does not replace it.
Biochemistry Makes the Connection Even More Visible
Biochemistry sits at the intersection of several systems.
Chemistry.
Biology.
Medicine.
Pharmacy.
Scientific communication.
A learner may need to understand a process such as protein synthesis or enzyme activity while simultaneously learning how that process is described academically in English.
Now language is not simply attached to the science.
It becomes part of how scientific relationships are organized and communicated.
The student needs to understand sentences such as:
The enzyme binds to the substrate at the active site.
The reaction is inhibited when...
The concentration increases as...
This process results in...
These structures appear again and again because science repeatedly asks similar intellectual questions:
What happened?
Why?
Under what conditions?
What changed?
What caused the change?
What follows from it?
Language becomes the architecture through which the scientific explanation is built.
Scientific English Is Also a Professional Skill
The issue does not disappear after school or university.
Future doctors may need English medical literature.
Pharmacists may read research papers and pharmaceutical documentation.
Biologists may work with international publications.
Researchers may present results in English.
Scientists may collaborate across countries.
Students may enter English-language university programs.
At that point, English is no longer merely another academic subject.
It becomes infrastructure.
A way to access knowledge.
A way to participate in professional communities.
A way to make one's own knowledge available to other people.
We explored the professional version of this principle in Your Skills Are Already There. English Helps Other People See Them.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/your-skills-already-english-helps-other-81qdf
The same is true in science.
Knowledge that cannot travel is limited by the language available to carry it.
Reading Science Requires Learning How Science Speaks
Scientific texts have their own habits.
They define.
Classify.
Compare.
Qualify.
Describe processes.
Establish causal relationships.
Express probability.
Distinguish correlation from causation.
Introduce evidence.
Limit claims.
A learner who knows general English may still find scientific writing unusually dense.
That does not necessarily mean their English is poor.
They are entering another discourse.
They need to learn not only English, but how science uses English.
This distinction matters.
Translation Can Help — But Translation Is Not the Final Goal
Translation can be extremely useful.
A difficult term can be clarified.
An assignment can be explained bilingually.
A scientific paragraph can be unpacked.
A vocabulary list can connect English terminology with concepts already known in another language.
But eventually the learner needs direct access.
They should be able to see:
enzyme activity
and reach the scientific concept without travelling through another language every time.
They should be able to read:
predict the products of the reaction
and begin solving the chemistry rather than first solving the English.
That transition is one of the most important stages in subject-specific language development.
English stops standing between the learner and the science.
It becomes the language through which the science itself is accessed.
Sometimes the Fastest Route to English Is Through Difficult Knowledge
There is a paradox here.
Language courses often simplify content for learners.
Simple dialogues.
Simple topics.
Simple ideas.
That makes sense when the learner is also unfamiliar with the content.
But what if the student already understands something sophisticated?
Why force them to spend all their time discussing simpler ideas?
A university student who understands organic chemistry may have a powerful advantage.
Chemistry already provides:
meaning;
structure;
relationships;
predictable terminology;
recurring concepts;
intellectual motivation.
The subject itself can become a language-learning environment.
Sometimes sophisticated knowledge makes language easier because the learner already knows what the language is trying to say.
But We Should Never Assume the Knowledge Is There
The opposite mistake is equally dangerous.
A learner recognizes scientific terminology.
They can translate protein, enzyme, reaction and metabolism.
That does not prove they understand biochemistry.
Vocabulary can create the appearance of knowledge just as weak language can hide genuine knowledge.
So again we return to diagnosis.
Does the learner understand the science?
Do they understand the English?
Can they connect the two?
Those questions determine what should happen next.
Learn Chemistry and Biochemistry in English
This is the principle behind our dedicated learning direction:
Learn Chemistry and Biochemistry in English
https://timurlevitin.blogspot.com/p/learn-chemistry-and-biochemistry-in.html
Students can work with:
school chemistry;
university chemistry;
organic and physical chemistry;
biochemistry;
pharmaceutical chemistry;
scientific terminology;
chemistry for medicine, biology and pharmacy;
tests and examinations;
scientific texts and academic materials.
Depending on the learner's needs, lessons may focus on the subject itself, English scientific communication, or both together.
The main teacher for this direction is Valeriy A. Bacherikov, an associate professor with experience teaching future doctors, pharmacists and dentists.
That matters because genuine Language + Subject learning requires more than vocabulary.
The person teaching the material must understand the material.
Science Does Not Become Simpler in Another Language
Nor should it.
The objective is not to simplify chemistry until the learner's English catches up.
The objective is to build enough linguistic access for the learner's scientific thinking to operate.
Sometimes we teach a word.
Sometimes a sentence structure.
Sometimes a chemical principle.
Sometimes all three in the same lesson.
Because the real question is never merely:
Does this student know English?
Nor merely:
Does this student know chemistry?
The better question is:
Can this student understand, use and communicate the science they actually need?
That is where language and knowledge meet.
And when they finally begin working together, the student does not need to choose between learning English and learning science.
English becomes another language in which science can exist.
Continue Learning
A Student's Language Level Is Not Their Knowledge Level
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/students-language-level-knowledge-f1xlf
You Already Know More German Than You Think
https://timurlevitin.blogspot.com/2026/08/you-already-know-more-german-than-you.html
The Knowledge Was Never Lost. Only the Language Changed.
https://languagethinkinglab.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-knowledge-was-never-lost-only.html
Your Skills Are Already There. English Helps Other People See Them.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/your-skills-already-english-helps-other-81qdf
Learn More
Learn Chemistry and Biochemistry in English
https://timurlevitin.blogspot.com/p/learn-chemistry-and-biochemistry-in.html
Explore personalized online learning in languages, academic subjects and Language + Subject programs:
Levitin Language School
https://levitintymur.com/
Language Learnings (USA)
https://languagelearnings.com/
Contact: tymurlevitin@levitintymur.com
About the Author
Tymur Levitin
Founder & Director, Levitin Language School
Teacher, translator and author exploring language, thinking, education and the relationship between communication and knowledge.
At Levitin Language School, our educational model includes three interconnected directions:
Languages · Academic Subjects · Language + Subject
© Tymur Levitin. All rights reserved.
Global Learning. Personal Approach.
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