The Language of Math
Math has its own language, and it is quite Greek to many people. We need to encourage students to ask for the meaning of words they do not understand. A lack of comprehension of the terminology can be a huge barrier to learning mathematics. For example, a student may be asked to solve a quadratic equation by factoring. I have seen students who can factor the equation, but stop at that point, mainly because they do not know the meaning of the word solve.
As Paul Riccomini states in his journal article titled, “The Language of Mathematics: The Importance of Teaching and Learning Mathematical Vocabulary,”
“Vocabulary understanding is a major contributor to overall comprehension in many content areas, including mathematics. Effective methods for teaching vocabulary in all content areas are diverse and long standing. Teaching and learning the language of mathematics is vital for the development of mathematical proficiency. Students’ mathematical vocabulary learning is a very important part of their language development and ultimately mathematical proficiency”.
Bethany, aka The Math Geek Mama, wrote a very good article on this topic. Her top 4 reasons why learning the language of math is important for math fluency and competency are:
- You have to understand what the question is asking if you want to get it right.
- Often, everyday words have a different meaning in a mathematical context.
- More and more classrooms have a large, or even majority of ESL students.
- To allow for meaningful math discussions.
I really like the following statement written by Bethany:
“And as a side note, when I was teaching in a high school classroom, I always had vocabulary questions on each test. That’s how important I believe it is for students to be able to understand and explain math terms. These questions were not matching a word to a definition or writing out a formal definition. Rather, it would be something like, “True or false: It is possible for a quadratic equation to have two zeros. Explain your reasoning.” I want to know that they understand what all of those words mean well enough to apply it and explain it.”
Her complete article can be found at:
