This article attempted to describe the picture of primary and secondary math classrooms in rural and urban areas in South Africa while teaching and learning in the English mathematical language, when the main language of students is different from English. They focused particularly on the 'Code-Switching' i.e., explaining the mathematical concepts in student's main language rather than English, to reduce the complexity of the mathematical understanding and learning. The Authors have explained the language practices through two studies: 1) To observe the usage of code-switching in multilingual mathematics classrooms in South Africa. 2) To observe the mathematical discourses throughout the math classes in South Africa. They stated the crucial issues in the studies that LOLT (Language of learning and teaching) in South Africa is not familiar to students and mathematical registers have not properly developed in their own language to handle the situation of language in math classrooms. Because of this reason, teachers and students have to switch the language from English to their own local language to explain the context of the situations for math learning. It is also observed that political powers have also influenced the maximum use of the English language in the curriculum to have status in a global sense. Furthermore, In the second study, after observing math lessons in classes, the authors found that there is a continuous back and forth applicability between English and their own language, depending upon the situation and understanding about the context of the situation in math classroom. They also proposed that by Revoicing and casual cum informal math talks, the conflicts of languages for communication in multilingual classrooms could be addressed to some extent.
- "Oral proficiency in English in the absence of mother tongue instruction was negatively related to achievement in mathematics" (p.245). I think it is the complexity in the teaching- learning process where English and local language have been used insufficiently in the multilingual math classrooms.
- "Learners need to talk to learn, and such talking to learn is a function of fluency and ease in the language of communication" (p.246). From my perception, It is an important part to attain excellence in teaching-learning processes in math classrooms.
- Code-Switching is crucial to consider in the mathematical teaching-learning process in multilingual classrooms. Does this only occur in the case of language? Can we think of some other sort of switching in math classrooms which affect the teaching-learning process for mathematical learning?
Hi Sukh, that sounds like an interesting and important topic. It took me some time to understand the diagram about the movement from informal spoken to formal written mathematics in multilingual classrooms. Is there any pattern in choosing which language to express their thoughts in oral or writing? I think it's hard to say. Kids sometimes try to look for a certain vocabulary in their preferred languages, sometimes not only a vocabulary but a whole sentence to phrase. I'm so curious about the phenomenon, why "Oral proficiency in English in the absence of mother-tongue instruction was negatively related to achievement in mathematics" (p.245). Mathematics is better understood or explained in the mother language?
ReplyDeleteI am sorry I am not sure about your question. In my understanding, code-switching is in the background of language research. I can't figure out in what cases the code-switching would be discussed without the language issue. If I have any misconceptions, please correct me.
I agree that I found the diagram to be confusing and difficult to understand, but I think I figured it out eventually!
ReplyDeleteIn response to your question, and Jianying's comment about code-switching for langauges only, I found that my post from "last week" (the one I posted about first this week!) had to do with this. The article I read also dealt with code-switching in South African math classes! I found that to relate to the article, I had to think of code-switching between informal and formal language - although I am not sure that I was supposed to be doing that! So, I think that code-switching not only happens between languages, but also between formal and informal language (or language of students and language of teacher/subjects). However, I think that switching between informal and formal language can be helpful for students when they are just starting out, but not necessarily towards the end of a unit. However, I think this mostly has to do with aligning language used in a classroom with the language used to assess. For example, if I am assessing students in English, then I need to ensure that I am using the English terminology consistently and correctly in class.