My school's science department recently had a meeting with the English department. It is an unusual (at least in my experience) occurrence for these two departments to meet since at first glance there seems to be little about which they might collaborate. However, after years of discussing a persistent, troubling problem casually within the science department, it dawned on us that our problem was not a scientific problem but a language problem. The issue that was getting our attention was this: There is an apparent discrepancy between what the teacher is asking and what the student thinks the teacher is asking. Let me elaborate with some examples below.