This book is based on a series of lectures, which begin with a look at the history of the language that we use in order to encode our knowledge, particularly our scientific knowledge, i. e. , the history of scientific English. Prof. M. A. K. Halliday poses the question of how a growing child comes to master this kind of language and put it to his or her own use as a means of learning. In subsequent chapters, Halliday explores the relationship between language, education and culture, again taking the language of science as the focal point for the discussion; and finally he draws these various themes together to construct a linguistic interpretation of how we learn and how we learn how to learn.