Language Arts Instruction and Teacher Expertise | October 14, 2026 | Randi Whitney
What if one of the greatest barriers to reading and writing success isn’t what students haven’t been taught, but how many different ways they’ve been taught the very same thing?
Imagine being a student who has just entered a new grade level.
Last year, your teacher explained that the theme of a story was its lesson. This year, your teacher says the theme is the message. Another teacher calls it the moral. Someone else tells you that the theme is what the story is mostly about.
Which definition is correct?
Or perhaps you learned that a thesis statement was simply your opinion. The following year, you were told it was your topic sentence. By middle school, it suddenly became an argument with three reasons. Eventually, someone explained that a thesis was a central claim that could be defended with evidence.
At what point did you actually learn what a thesis statement is?
And more importantly, how much instructional time was spent relearning, redefining, and attempting to reconcile something that should have been building on a consistent foundation all along?
This is why I believe we need to begin calibrating the language of language arts.
Not simply aligning our standards. Not merely coordinating our curriculum. Not just making certain that students encounter the appropriate concepts at the appropriate grade levels.
We need to align the actual language we use to explain those concepts.
Because students cannot consistently apply what they cannot consistently define.
And they cannot confidently advance into abstract thinking when the concrete foundations beneath that thinking continually shift.
What Does It Mean to Calibrate the Language of Language Arts?
When we calibrate a measuring instrument, we establish a dependable reference point. We ensure that the instrument produces consistent measurements regardless of who uses it.
Imagine if every ruler in a school had a slightly different definition of an inch.
One classroom measured an inch one way. Another classroom measured it a little differently. Each teacher was doing their best, but students were expected to adapt to a new measurement every year.
We would never consider that an acceptable approach to teaching mathematics.
Yet in language arts, we sometimes allow something remarkably similar to happen.
Words such as theme, main idea, summary, thesis, inference, analysis, evidence, introduction, conclusion, and elaboration may take on slightly different meanings depending on the classroom, curriculum, teacher, or grade level.
Some differences represent legitimate increases in complexity. Others are simply inconsistencies in terminology or explanations that have never been deliberately aligned.
The result can be a learning environment in which students spend valuable mental energy trying to understand what their teacher means instead of concentrating on the actual reading, writing, or thinking task.
Calibrating the language of language arts means establishing a shared, accurate, and developmentally expandable understanding of the essential academic vocabulary that students will encounter throughout their education.
It means that when a third-grade teacher introduces a concept, a fifth-grade teacher builds upon it, and an eighth-grade teacher extends it, they are all developing the same underlying understanding.
The explanations become more sophisticated.
The applications become more challenging.
The expectations become more rigorous.
But the foundational meaning remains recognizable and dependable.
That is calibration.
And I believe it is a missing piece of meaningful vertical alignment.
First Comes the Concrete. Then Comes the Abstract.
One of the most important principles we must remember about instruction is that learners need something dependable to hold onto before we ask them to manipulate, extend, or apply increasingly complex ideas.
In language arts, many of the concepts we teach are inherently abstract.
A theme cannot be held in your hand.
An inference cannot be pointed to in exactly the same way as a word printed on a page.
A thesis statement represents a relationship between ideas, not simply a sentence students memorize.
So how do we make these concepts accessible?
We begin by making their meanings concrete.
We offer precise, student-friendly definitions. We connect those definitions to visible examples and nonexamples. We demonstrate the essential characteristics of the concept. We allow students to recognize, explain, construct, and apply it.
Only then do we progressively increase the complexity.
Consider the progression:
Concrete Understanding → Recognition → Application → Analysis → Abstract Thinking → Independent Transfer
A student first learns what something means.
Next, the student recognizes it when encountered.
Then the student begins using it.
Eventually, the student can analyze its effectiveness, recognize its variations, apply it in unfamiliar situations, and make sophisticated decisions about its use.
These stages are interconnected rather than rigid steps, but the principle is important: clear foundational understanding makes advanced thinking more accessible.
We should not confuse increasing rigor with changing definitions.
Rigor is not making something sound more complicated.
Rigor is helping students think more deeply about something they genuinely understand.
Example One: Shouldn’t Every Student Know What an Introduction Is?
Ask teachers across several grade levels what belongs in an introduction, and you may receive a surprising variety of answers.
One teacher may say an introduction consists of a hook, background information, and a thesis.
Another may require an attention-getter, three supporting ideas, and a topic sentence.
Another may teach that students must begin with a question.
Still another may tell students to start with a broad statement and gradually narrow their focus.
Each approach may provide useful instruction in a particular context. However, a familiar instructional structure is not necessarily the definition of the concept itself.
Students deserve to understand the difference.
A calibrated foundational definition might be:
An introduction is the beginning of a piece of writing that prepares readers for what follows by establishing the subject, purpose, or central direction of the writing.
That definition can remain meaningful throughout a student’s education.
In elementary school, students might learn to introduce their topic clearly and prepare the reader for the information or story that follows.
In middle school, students might learn to establish context, develop a purposeful opening, and present a focused thesis or central idea when appropriate.
In high school, students may experiment with sophisticated rhetorical openings, nuanced contextual information, and carefully constructed claims.
The writing changes.
The sophistication changes.
The expectations change.
But students are never forced to abandon the foundational meaning.
An introduction is still the beginning that prepares the reader for the writing that follows.
We can also teach students that introductions differ depending on purpose and genre. A narrative introduction may establish a character, setting, or conflict. An argumentative introduction may establish an issue and present a claim. An informative introduction may introduce a topic and clarify its importance.
Not every introduction requires a question, a catchy hook, or exactly three sentences.
The purpose is essential. The structure is adaptable.
This distinction is precisely what calibration should accomplish.
Example Two: What Exactly Is a Thesis Statement?
Few academic concepts illustrate the need for consistent terminology better than the thesis statement.
Students may be told that a thesis is an opinion, a topic, a topic sentence, a claim, a position, or a sentence containing three reasons.
Those concepts are related, but they are not necessarily interchangeable.
A topic identifies what someone is writing about.
An opinion expresses what someone thinks or prefers.
A claim asserts something that can be supported or defended.
A thesis provides the central controlling idea or position that gives a piece of writing its direction.
These distinctions matter.
A calibrated foundational definition might be:
A thesis statement expresses the focused central idea, interpretation, or position that a piece of writing develops, explains, or supports.
Students can then learn the essential building blocks of an effective thesis:
1. A focused subject: What specifically is the writing addressing?
2. A central idea or position: What does the writer want readers to understand, consider, or believe about that subject?
3. A clear direction: What will the writing develop, explain, demonstrate, or support?
Not every effective thesis explicitly lists its supporting reasons. Not every thesis is argumentative. Its structure depends on the purpose and genre of the writing.
Consider how the same basic understanding can grow across grade levels.
Elementary example:
Our school should plant a garden because students could learn about plants and practice responsibility.
The position is understandable, and the student provides a clear direction for supporting it.
Middle school example:
Creating a school garden would strengthen science instruction while giving students meaningful opportunities to develop responsibility and collaboration.
The central position is more developed, and the relationship between the supporting ideas is clearer.
High school example:
Integrating student-maintained gardens into school campuses can transform environmental education from an abstract academic subject into a practical experience that develops scientific understanding, personal responsibility, and community engagement.
The underlying concept remains consistent, but the complexity of the language, relationships, and argument increases.
Students are not learning three unrelated definitions of a thesis.
They are learning increasingly sophisticated ways to construct one.
That is what vertical academic growth should look like.
We should not have to redefine a concept in order to deepen it.
Example Three: The Summary Shouldn’t Change Its Identity Every August
Now consider the word summary.
Some students are taught that a summary is a shorter version of a passage.
Others learn that it is the five most important things that happened.
Some believe a summary must be exactly three sentences.
Others think it is the beginning, middle, and end.
Still others believe they are supposed to retell everything using different words.
Each explanation may help students with a particular task, but without a shared definition, they may never recognize the deeper concept connecting them.
A calibrated foundational definition might be:
A summary is a concise, accurate restatement of the most important information or ideas from a text, expressed in the reader’s own words without unnecessary details or personal opinions.
That is a definition students can grow with.
A younger student might summarize a narrative by identifying the central events needed to understand the story.
An older student might summarize a complex informational passage by identifying its central idea and essential supporting information.
An advanced student might summarize competing arguments, complex literary developments, or several related sources while maintaining accuracy and objectivity.
The kinds of texts change.
The level of synthesis changes.
The sophistication of the writing changes.
But the fundamental concept does not.
A summary still captures the essential meaning of something larger in a shorter, accurate form.
And perhaps most importantly, students learn what a summary is not.
It is not an exhaustive retelling.
It is not an opportunity to insert personal opinions.
It is not a collection of random details.
It is not defined solely by a prescribed number of sentences.
Once students own the concept, they are better prepared to adjust the length and complexity of their summaries to the needs of a particular assignment.
Calibration gives students the understanding they need to be flexible.
The Same Problem Extends Across Literary Elements and Academic Vocabulary
Introductions, thesis statements, and summaries represent only the beginning.
Consider how many other terms students encounter repeatedly throughout their language arts education.
Theme: An underlying message or insight about life, people, or the human experience that a literary work develops or conveys.
Main Idea: The most important point a text or section communicates about its subject.
Inference: A reasonable understanding or conclusion developed by combining evidence with what the reader already knows.
Text Evidence: Specific information from a text that supports an answer, explanation, or interpretation.
Analysis: Examining information or parts of a text to explain how they work, relate, or contribute to meaning.
Explanation: Making an idea, answer, process, or relationship understandable by showing how or why it works or is supported.
Elaboration: Developing an idea with relevant details, examples, reasoning, or explanations that deepen the reader’s understanding.
Revision: Improving writing by reconsidering and changing ideas, organization, clarity, development, or effectiveness.
Editing: Correcting or improving the conventions of written language, including grammar, usage, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling.
Conclusion: The ending of a piece of writing that provides appropriate closure and reinforces or extends the writing’s overall meaning or purpose.
These are proposed starting points for a shared language arts glossary. A school or district would refine them to ensure alignment with its adopted standards and the contexts in which each term is used.
The goal is not to create a dictionary that students memorize without understanding.
The goal is to establish a consistent intellectual foundation.
Consider the difference between theme and main idea.
Both deal with meaning, but they are not identical.
Students who are told that both simply mean “what the story is about” may struggle when asked to identify a universal message supported by a literary work.
Or consider evidence and explanation.
If students believe that copying a sentence from the passage automatically explains their thinking, they may produce written responses containing accurate quotations but little actual reasoning.
The difference is foundational.
Evidence supports the thinking.
Explanation reveals the reasoning connecting that evidence to the idea being developed.
And those distinctions should not depend on which teacher a student happens to have.
Vertical Alignment Should Mean Vertical Growth, Not Vertical Reinvention
Schools devote considerable time to aligning curriculum across grade levels.
We examine standards, create pacing guides, identify prerequisites, develop common assessments, and discuss what students should know before entering the next grade.
All of that matters.
But I believe we need to add another question to our vertical alignment conversations:
Are we using the same foundational academic language to describe the concepts we expect students to understand?
Imagine a team of teachers from third grade through high school sitting together and examining the word theme.
The third-grade teacher explains how students recognize an underlying message and connect it to events in a story.
The fifth-grade teacher explains how students support that interpretation using character decisions, conflicts, and outcomes.
The eighth-grade teacher explains how students analyze the development of a theme through the relationships among literary elements.
The high school teacher explains how students examine nuanced, competing, or evolving themes and the author’s choices in developing them.
Now imagine that every teacher begins with the same foundational understanding of what a theme is.
No one has to erase the previous year’s definition.
No one has to tell students that what they learned before was wrong merely because the current lesson uses different vocabulary.
Instead, the teacher can say:
“You already know what a theme is. This year, we’re going to examine how authors develop more complex themes and how different elements of a text work together to reveal them.”
What a powerful difference that makes.
The student hears a message of continuity and growth.
The new learning becomes an extension of existing knowledge rather than a replacement for it.
A vertically aligned curriculum should be a staircase, not a series of disconnected starting lines.
Students should be able to look backward and recognize what they have learned, look forward and understand where they are going, and clearly see how each new level grows from the one before it.
We Must Distinguish Between a Definition, a Strategy, and a Formula
This may be one of the most important distinctions in the entire conversation.
Teachers regularly create valuable instructional strategies to help students understand challenging concepts.
We use acronyms, graphic organizers, sentence stems, color coding, anchor charts, mentor texts, games, and writing structures.
These supports can make complex learning more accessible.
But a strategy is not necessarily a definition.
A five-sentence paragraph is a possible instructional structure.
It is not the definition of a paragraph.
A three-part introduction is one way to organize an opening.
It is not the universal definition of an introduction.
A beginning-middle-end organizer can help students summarize narrative events.
It is not the definition of a summary.
A topic-and-three-reasons formula may help students construct an initial thesis.
It is not the only valid structure for a thesis statement.
When students confuse the scaffolding with the underlying concept, they may struggle to recognize or apply that concept outside the original instructional format.
They may know how to complete the worksheet without understanding the academic idea the worksheet was designed to teach.
And when the next grade introduces a different strategy, the student may believe the original concept has changed.
We must teach students what something is before insisting that they learn one particular way of doing it.
A sound definition creates stability.
A strategy provides support.
A formula offers a temporary structure.
Deep understanding makes independent decisions possible.
All four have a place in instruction, but they should never be confused with one another.
Calibration Should Make Language Arts More Creative, Not More Restrictive
Whenever we discuss common definitions and consistent academic vocabulary, a reasonable concern emerges:
Will standardization make teaching mechanical?
Will students become overly dependent on predetermined language?
Will we sacrifice creativity in the pursuit of consistency?
I believe the opposite can be true.
The more clearly students understand the foundational principles of language, the more confidently they can experiment with them.
A musician must understand notes, rhythm, and musical relationships before intentionally experimenting with their arrangement.
An artist benefits from understanding color, shape, balance, and proportion before making purposeful artistic choices.
A writer likewise benefits from understanding structure, purpose, language, and the relationships between ideas.
Understanding what an introduction does allows a writer to create a more original introduction.
Understanding what a thesis accomplishes allows a writer to develop a more sophisticated argument.
Understanding how evidence and explanation work together allows a writer to create more meaningful reasoning.
Understanding the purpose of a conclusion allows a writer to bring a piece of writing to an effective and memorable close.
Calibration is not about making every student write the same sentence or construct the same paragraph.
It is about ensuring that students understand the principles behind the choices they make.
Consistency in meaning should create freedom in application.
We are not calibrating creativity.
We are calibrating the knowledge that makes creativity more intentional.
What Would Calibration Actually Look Like Across a School or District?
If we truly believe academic language should be consistent, we must move beyond the conversation and create practical systems that support it.
Here are seven important actions schools and districts could take.
1. Establish a shared language arts vocabulary
Identify the essential academic terms students encounter repeatedly throughout their education.
Include reading comprehension, literary analysis, written composition, grammar, revising, editing, and research.
Develop clear, accurate, student-accessible foundational definitions for those terms.
These definitions should reflect the actual concepts, not simply the strategies used to teach them.
2. Create vertically aligned levels of complexity
For every essential term, determine how student understanding should deepen across grade levels.
The foundational meaning should remain dependable while expectations for application, explanation, analysis, and independence progressively increase.
A third grader and a tenth grader do not need to produce identical work to share an understanding of the same concept.
3. Identify examples and nonexamples
Definitions alone are rarely sufficient.
Show students what each concept looks like in authentic reading and writing.
Just as importantly, show them what it does not look like.
Compare a topic with a thesis.
Compare a retelling with a summary.
Compare a statement of fact from a story with a transferable theme.
Compare evidence with explanation.
These comparisons bring academic vocabulary into sharper focus.
4. Separate the meaning of a concept from the method used to teach it
Teachers should absolutely have flexibility in how they teach.
One teacher may use a graphic organizer. Another may use color coding. Another may use a discussion routine or an interactive learning task.
The strategies can vary.
The core meaning should remain consistent.
We should also explicitly teach students when different contexts call for different forms or more specialized meanings.
For example, a claim in an argument and a controlling idea in an informative essay are related but serve different purposes. Calibration should make those relationships clear rather than pretend every word has only one possible use.
5. Use consistent terminology across instructional materials
Imagine what could happen if classroom slides, teacher scripts, student workbooks, assessments, rubrics, and instructional feedback all reinforced the same foundational meanings.
The learning would not depend upon a single encounter with a term.
Instead, students would experience repeated opportunities to retrieve, recognize, discuss, and apply it.
When teachers use a synonym or a more advanced term, they should intentionally connect the new language to the established concept.
This helps students expand their academic vocabulary without losing their foundational understanding.
6. Assess conceptual understanding, not just memorized wording
Students should certainly be able to explain academic terms.
But we must look beyond whether they can repeat a definition.
Can they identify an example?
Can they explain why something qualifies?
Can they recognize a nonexample?
Can they apply the concept independently?
Can they transfer their understanding to a new passage, writing assignment, or genre?
A student who memorizes that a summary includes the most important information has taken an important first step.
A student who can consistently distinguish important information from interesting but unnecessary details demonstrates something deeper.
Calibration begins with language, but it must lead to understanding.
7. Revisit and strengthen the definitions as students progress
A calibrated vocabulary should not be taught once and forgotten.
Students need to encounter essential concepts repeatedly in increasingly sophisticated contexts.
Teachers can deliberately retrieve prior knowledge, reconnect students to foundational definitions, and demonstrate how the current lesson expands what they already know.
This approach allows academic vocabulary to become a durable part of students’ thinking rather than a temporary collection of words attached to the current unit.
The Adults Must Calibrate Before We Expect the Children To
There is another essential part of this conversation.
Teachers themselves need opportunities to discuss, compare, and align the language they use.
This is not about identifying teachers who are doing something wrong.
Teachers frequently inherit vocabulary and instructional structures from the curriculum they were given, the professional development they attended, the textbooks they used, or the strategies they discovered through experience.
Different instructional resources may use different terminology for closely related concepts.
A teacher may explain an idea one way because that explanation has worked well with students.
Another teacher may use a different explanation for exactly the same reason.
Individually, both may be trying to make learning accessible.
But collectively, these differences can create confusion when students transition between classrooms and grade levels.
That is why calibration should be collaborative.
Imagine a professional learning community where teachers are asked to write their own definitions of theme, thesis, summary, analysis, and elaboration before discussing them.
What similarities would emerge?
Where would the definitions differ?
Which differences reflect legitimate variations in context?
Which differences could unintentionally mislead students?
And what shared explanations could educators agree to use as students advance?
This is the kind of professional conversation that can have lasting value.
It is not merely a discussion about vocabulary.
It is a discussion about the concepts students are expected to understand and the instructional coherence they deserve.
When educators agree on the foundations, they can spend more of their instructional expertise helping students reach higher levels of understanding.
Calibrated Language Supports Students Who Have Experienced Inconsistent Instruction
Not every student travels through one curriculum, one school, or one predictable sequence of instruction.
Students move between campuses and districts.
Some enter classrooms with gaps in foundational knowledge.
Some are developing academic English while simultaneously learning increasingly complex content.
Some have received extensive instruction in reading but less consistent instruction in written expression.
Others have learned procedures successfully without fully understanding the concepts behind them.
Consistent academic terminology cannot eliminate every learning gap, but it can remove an unnecessary source of confusion.
When schools establish dependable definitions and repeatedly connect instruction to those meanings, students have clearer opportunities to recognize what they already know and identify what they still need to learn.
A student who changes schools should not have to learn an entirely new definition of a familiar literary element simply because the instructional materials have changed.
A struggling writer should not have to determine whether elaboration means adding more sentences, including another quotation, or actually developing reasoning.
A student learning academic English should have access to consistent terms, explicit explanations, and meaningful examples that connect language to understanding.
Clarity is not a reduction in rigor. Clarity is one of the pathways to rigor.
And consistency can create a more accessible environment in which students are better positioned to demonstrate what they know.
Reading and Writing Become More Connected When They Share a Common Language
One of the most significant benefits of calibration is the opportunity to strengthen the relationship between reading and writing.
Too often, students encounter reading vocabulary and writing vocabulary as though they belong to entirely separate subjects.
But reading and writing are deeply interconnected.
A reader analyzes how an author introduces an idea.
A writer learns to introduce an idea effectively.
A reader identifies an author’s central claim.
A writer develops a central claim.
A reader examines how evidence supports an interpretation.
A writer selects evidence to support an explanation or argument.
A reader analyzes how the author organizes and connects ideas.
A writer makes organizational decisions to communicate meaning.
When students understand the shared concepts, reading becomes a source of insight into effective writing, and writing becomes an opportunity to demonstrate comprehension.
This connection is especially powerful when vocabulary is intentionally aligned.
Students begin to recognize that evidence does not become a completely different concept simply because they move from answering a reading question to composing an essay.
Similarly, understanding how an author develops a central idea can help students understand how to develop their own.
The more intentionally we connect the language of reading and writing, the more opportunities students have to transfer learning between the two.
We should not teach reading and writing as disconnected collections of terminology when they share so many of the same intellectual foundations.
Confidence Grows When Students Know What They Know
There is an important emotional dimension to all of this.
Imagine a student who has studied a concept for several years but still hesitates when asked to explain it.
The student recognizes the word.
The student remembers hearing it.
The student may even remember completing worksheets about it.
But the student is uncertain which explanation the teacher expects.
That uncertainty can affect participation, independence, and confidence.
Now imagine the same student entering a new grade level and hearing a familiar, dependable definition.
The teacher then explains how the class will build upon that understanding.
Instead of wondering whether previous learning was incorrect, the student recognizes an opportunity for growth.
There is a meaningful difference between saying:
“That’s how you learned it last year, but this year we’re doing it differently.”
And saying:
“You already understand the foundation. Now we’re going to take that understanding further.”
The second statement recognizes learning as cumulative.
It reinforces the idea that knowledge is something students build, not something they must repeatedly discard and replace.
For students who already find reading and writing challenging, this consistency can be especially valuable.
They need meaningful opportunities to strengthen and apply their understanding, not unnecessary confusion caused by shifting terminology.
The goal is not simply to help students remember more definitions. The goal is to give them greater confidence in the knowledge those definitions represent.
From Common Language to Common Understanding to Higher-Level Thinking
Ultimately, calibrating the language of language arts is not really about creating a glossary.
The glossary is only the beginning.
The larger goal is to establish a coherent instructional environment in which foundational concepts remain stable while thinking becomes increasingly sophisticated.
We want students to move from recognizing a concept to understanding it.
From understanding it to applying it.
From applying it to analyzing it.
From analyzing it to making thoughtful and independent decisions.
And eventually, from independent application to transferring that understanding across unfamiliar situations, new genres, and increasingly complex academic challenges.
A shared definition cannot accomplish all of that on its own.
Students still need explicit instruction, meaningful practice, rich discussion, timely feedback, strong examples, and opportunities to think deeply.
But the shared definition provides a dependable starting point.
It gives teachers and students a common language for discussing success, identifying misunderstandings, and determining the next instructional step.
At Teach BIG and The Writing Academy®, LLC., the goal is to develop readers, writers, and thinkers who understand not only what to do, but why they are doing it and how to apply that understanding independently.
Calibrating academic language is one way to support that goal.
Because when students know the language of learning, they are better equipped to participate in the thinking that language makes possible.
My Challenge to Educators: Let’s Stop Changing the Starting Line
I believe we need to ask ourselves some important questions.
What would happen if every student could advance from one grade to the next with a dependable understanding of the essential vocabulary of language arts?
What would happen if teachers never had to spend valuable instructional time undoing a misleading definition from a previous year?
What would happen if students could explain exactly what a thesis statement is, what makes a summary effective, how evidence differs from explanation, and why a theme is more than a topic?
What would happen if our conversations about vertical alignment extended beyond the standards we teach to include the actual language we use to teach them?
And perhaps most importantly:
What could our students accomplish if we spent less time redefining the foundations and more time building upon them?
I am not suggesting that language arts instruction should become rigid, formulaic, or identical in every classroom.
Quite the opposite.
I am suggesting that shared foundations allow for greater instructional freedom, stronger academic transfer, and more sophisticated thinking.
The vocabulary should remain consistent enough to be dependable.
The instruction should remain flexible enough to be responsive.
And the learning should become increasingly complex as students develop.
We should not expect a third grader to write like a tenth grader.
But we should expect that third grader’s foundational understanding of academic language to help prepare the student for what comes next.
Because every new grade level should represent growth, not a complete reinvention of what students previously understood.
First, we calibrate the language.
Then, we cultivate the understanding.
Finally, we elevate the thinking.
When educators speak a common academic language, students have a better opportunity to develop a lasting understanding of the concepts behind the words.
And when those concepts remain consistent, students can spend their energy doing what we wanted them to do all along:
Reading more deeply.
Thinking more critically.
Writing more effectively.
And communicating with confidence.
It’s time to calibrate the language of language arts, because students shouldn’t have to relearn what a concept means before they can learn more about it.
