A Study On The Mathematical Language Competence Of The Fifth Grade Pupils

Languages are the tools to describe and express meanings, and the carriers of ideas exchanges. Mathematics, conducted through languages, transmits knowledge and meanings. In the course of classroom mathematical education, communications between teachers and pupils are conducted through everyday language plus mathematical language, and mathematical contents are expressed via languages of various forms. This thesis attempts to investigate the mathematical language competency of Grade 5 pupils in a certain Shanghai primary school, to determine whether gender influences the pupils' mathematical language competency, and to provide some reflections on how to improve pupils' mathematical language competency in primary school mathematical language education.This thesis comprises five parts:The first part introduces the background, meaning and description of the research.The second part reviews international and domestic researches on mathematical language, including the definition, classification and determination of mathematical language, studies on the relations between thoughts and languages, between languages and mathematics learning, on empirical research on mathematical language and barriers in mathematical language.The third part sets forth the design and process of the research, including research object, implementing procedures, methodology and design of test papers.The forth part, the core part of this thesis, analyzes and discusses the results of the test. By the analysis and discussion, the mathematical language competency of pupils in the Shanghai primary school and gender influence on mathematical language competency have been presented.The last part, based on analysis on results of the test, face-to-face communications with the pupils and classroom observations, presents the major conclusions of this research, provides some reflections and suggestions on mathematical language education activities in primary school.The tentative conclusions reached hereof include:(1) regarding the three types of mathematical language, the pupils investigated are weak in graphic language, good at sign language and moderate in word language; (2) in terms of mathematical content, the pupils performed poorly in mathematical language concerning geometry and probability statistics as a whole, and performed better in mathematical language concerning numbers and operations, formula and algebra; (3) as far as mathematical language competency is concerned, pupils have problems in recognition, comprehension, conversion and expression of mathematical language, especially on fully and accurately understanding words in mathematical language; (4) mathematical language competency of boys and girls varies widely, with girls out-performing their male peers in mathematical language competency.