This report represents an attempt made by the field staff of a Summer Institute of Linguistics at the University of Papua New Guinea to improve the existing educational programs, which, by and large, are centrally produced in an expatriate-dominated context, and administered country-wide. Based on the assumption that language and social structure are very similar, such a program could be feasible. However, in Papua New Guinea with its diversity of cultures, and each culture evolving its own language, and language the way in which reality is represented, this surely led to confusion and misunderstanding. The author sent to all field staff a specially-constructed questionnaire related to their understanding of math/science concepts and the degree of difficulty the staff encountered in expressing these concepts in their own vernacular. Using the resultant data, the author suggests possible approaches that could be used to deal with conceptual difficulties encountered by students. Teacher awareness, consideration of student involvement in activities and then attempting to derive a concept is a method proposed and schematically presented. (Author/EB)