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For many students who struggle with mathematics, word problems
are just a jumble of words and numbers.
—Zorfass, Gray and PowerUpPeople often say language doesn’t matter. But consider the fact that we say
“Turn the volume up” or “Measure the volume of this box.” We say, “Set
that on the table” and “Let’s make a table to solve that.” We say, “That’s
odd,” but ask, “Which one of these is an odd number?” We say, “I want
some of those,” and we ask, “What’s the sum?” The language of math is
so difficult. We have to consider the different types of words and how they
have multiple meanings in everyday language and then in math.
One time I asked a student what an “expression” was and he said,
“Oh that’s something you make on your face.” I said, “Yes it is, but what
about in math.” He had no idea. I asked another student, “What does the
word multiple mean?” She said, “Oh you know it is when you have a lot
of copies of something.” One of the first things that I do when I am
unpacking a word problem with students is to make sure that they under-
stand what all the words in the problem mean. If we are going to help
students to get better at word problems, we need to help them get better
at understanding math words. Here are six things to think about concern-
ing language and word problems.
- Math Language Is Specialized
Researchers have written about the specialized nature of math vocabulary
(Rubenstein and Thompson, 2002; Heinze, 2005; Rubenstein, 2007; Gay,
2008). They note that it can be difficult for a variety of reasons.
- Some words are used in both everyday English and in math, but
have different meanings in each context. For example: right angle
versus right answer.