The Importance Of Mathemacy In Mathematics

Mathematics is its own language, and no matter what language a mathematician speaks, his ideas will be understood by all dialects. Since mathematics is a language, it has its own discourse, and has its own unique way of reading and writing. The Board of Studies Teaching & Educational Standards NSW ([BOSTES], 2016) explains how students should develop an understanding and fluency in mathematics. However, a few methods outlined by BOSTES (2016) to achieve this fluency are inquiry, exploring and communication. This presents problems for low level literacy and EAL/D students since the main issues they face with learning is that they struggle with forms of communication, whether it be written or oral.

Mathematics has its own register of signs and symbols that students will need to interpret. Unfortunately, these signs and symbols come about differently when it comes to symbolic notation, oral language, written language and visual displays such as shapes and graphs (Meiers & Trevitt, 2010). O’Halloran (2000) highlights the importance of the teacher’s role in guiding students to understand this language, and suggest the use of oral language to unpack and explain the meaning behind mathematical symbolism. However, there are a few problems that arise from the language of mathematics. First of all,

And while many algebraic techniques use symbols greatly, their meanings are explained using spoken language (ACARA, 2014a). This may be problematic for EAL/D and low literacy students, especially those who have missed a lot of class, as they may have missed these explanations. For example the symbol ‘2x-4’, this should be read as ‘x is greater than two x minus four’. This would be very difficult for EAL/D students unless they have been provided of a scaffold with the written and spoken language (ACARA,