I teach my students to expand their search vocabularies and think carefully about the search terms and phrases they use during the research process. It’s important that I also think carefully about the words I use when teaching and expand my teaching vocabulary. I was reminded of this the other night while helping my husband make dinner. I’m currently hobbled due to knee surgery and instructed him from a seat at the kitchen counter to cut four pats of butter. His question “What’s a pat?” flummoxed me; I couldn’t find more words to describe a pat of butter; I just kept repeating the word “pat” (ala the “Fold in the Cheese” scene from Schitt’s Creek). For me, someone who has cooked all their life and went to culinary school, I am so entrenched in the terminology of cooking that I don’t always explain things clearly. This experience highlighted that, as a law librarian, I am so familiar with the terminology of legal research that I may not explain things clearly to my students.
Since language is “the medium through which law does most of its work” and is integral to teaching and research, this experience made me think about the words I use to teach legal research.[1] I wondered how I can thoughtfully examine my language choices to ensure I’m effectively conveying information in ways students will comprehend and not alienating students by using terms and jargon without offering clear explanations. I also wondered how my own language choices could emphasize the need to expand search vocabularies. All of this is important for teaching first-year law students, especially as we are faced with trying to teach them how to effectively and efficiently use new and quickly evolving technologies. These students are already cognitively overloaded from learning the “language of the law” in other classes and navigating the law school environment. They may also not feel comfortable asking for clarification.
One thing I’m incorporating into my introduction to legal research course this semester is starting each class by introducing new or unusual terms and phrases we will use during the class. For example, for a class on case law research I’ll include a list of terms and basic definitions for such terms as “stare decisis,” “citator,” and “jurisdiction.” For a class on statutory law, I can include basic definitions for “code,” “annotated code,” and “amendment.” This provides a brief introduction so when we use these terms in class, students already have a basic familiarity and can devote more cognitive effort to understanding how these concepts are used in legal research.
I am also trying to build in more opportunities to demonstrate how the search terms we use impacts the results we received. Generative AI, such as ChatGPT and Bard, has presented a good opportunity to demonstrate this – carefully. Well-constructed, concrete prompts create better results. Josh Kubiki provides the Five Ps[2] in prompt creation:
- Prime – provide context
- Persona – personality, time, expertise, background
- Prompt – clearly ask for specific facts and/or series of actions
- Product – tell the chatbot what you want
- Polish – evaluate the response and refine the prompt or ask follow up questions to elaborate
Creating prompts for ChatGPT and Bard gave my students the opportunity to contextualize their search terms which helped them think about additional terms and view an issue from different terminological viewpoints. Search terms were not detached from the context of the legal issue as they may become on a search engine, like Google, or in an index on Westlaw and Lexis.
Constructing my own prompts for generative AI systems has also helped me think about my search vocabularies and my teaching language. Just as I create prompts that are clear, provide context, and that I polish when I want to refine responses, I have to use language that is clear to all my students, provides enough context for them to understand how what I am saying fits in the larger legal research process, and I need to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of my teaching language and refine as needed to ensure students learn effectively.
A few more ideas for expanding and examining our teaching language are:
- Use a thesaurus to expand teaching vocabulary
- Get feedback from other instructors and students
- Explain metaphors – metaphors can be helpful, but we shouldn’t assume all students will understand the metaphor
- Create a welcoming learning environment where students feel comfortable asking questions
What are your ideas for expanding and examining the language we use to teach?
And in case you were wondering, a pat is generally between 1/3 and 1/2 tablespoons of butter.
[1] John M. Conley, William M. O’Barr & Robin Conley Riner, Just Words 2 (3d ed. 2019).
[2] Josh Kubiki, The Power of Generative AI, https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jpkubicki_genai-prompting-quick-guide-activity-7062039737934516224-gkM-/?originalSubdomain=my.
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