As teachers evaluate students' responses, the belief system they use to make sense of students' work becomes critical. This focus group interview study (n=25) of high school science teachers examined teachers' language ideology in science. Teachers were asked to evaluate the accuracy of students work by watching videos of lessons and written samples of students' work. We coded teachers' responses into two prominent categories--"Binary Thinking" and "Spectrum Thinking." When using "Binary Thinking" teachers viewed language and concepts as either completely correct or incorrect. When using "Spectrum Thinking" teachers viewed components of language and concepts as being partially correct. We found that teacher used each approach inconsistently. We discovered that teachers used both models inconsistently and influenced each other.