Also like other Tier One core courses, its concepts have applicability in other disciplines, but are not the focus of instruction in those disciplines. We can all benefit, however, from understanding the principles each discipline teaches because new knowledge and some of the most creative solutions to intellectual problems are found through applying more than one disciplinary perspective. Students are required to take core courses in all disciplines in order to understand fundamental principles that influence their everyday lives. Language is a symbolic system that allows us to understand the abstractions it represents. Linguistic ability, particularly written, is a developmental skill that evolves in conjunction with conceptualization, and thus the ability to think is limited by the level of ability to articulate abstractions.
Advanced conceptualization requires advanced symbolic language facility.
Learning is thus partially a matter of negotiating a common meaning with others. Common knowledge, therefore, is collaboratively constructed through written and oral dialogs among conversants. We actually discover and clarify our ideas through our successive attempts to articulate them in symbolic language.