The term "introduced species" makes sense to many adults whoknow that it means species brought from one place to another. But for middle-school students, the concept requires more of a leap. So do other environmental terms such as "biodiversity loss" and "overconsumption." Which is why the World Wildlife Fund, supported by an Eastman Kodak Co. grant, enlisted a UC Davis linguistics professor to help study how such biodiversity concepts can be made more accessible to urban, multicultural students. Professor Mary Schleppegrell has observed what environmental concepts prove formidable in the classroom, so she can help developers of new environmental education materials improve their products. "We analyzed the vocabulary and grammatical structure of the texts used to teach about the environment and then looked at what the kids wrote to see where abstract notions didn't come through," Schleppegrell said. She is one of several researchers around the country collaborating on the WWF project. Environmental education is an interesting place to study language, she says, because it brings together social science and science issues "with an overlay of public-policy aspects." Schleppegrell has presented her study at the North American Association for Environmental Education annual meeting and will present it in August at the Congress of the International Association for Applied Linguistics.