Mathematical Word Problems and Bilingual Learners in England

(Chapter 5 in Multilingualism in Mathematics Classrooms, 2009)

R. Barwell


The author explores how English Language Learners (ELLs) interpret and work with given word problems and how a teacher can support them in England. This is one of Barwell’s works, and he argues in this paper that there are three aspects of ELLs’ sense-making in word problems from his discursive analysis. He gave the students including native English speaker the writing tasks that they discuss to build own word problems with their peer. According to his analysis, the task “1) allowed students to bring personal experiences into their thinking, 2) led students to pay attention to the nature of the word problem genre, and 3) allowed for a productive, mutually supportive interaction between language learning and mathematical thinking.” In other words, work of writing word problems gave the students the space that they can enrich their understanding about how word problems work, they can utilize their own experience through the process of making stories, and they can learn English by connecting to mathematical thinking in English.

Comment

As I have been reading several Barwell’s articles and his works in England, I was thinking the different contexts between his participating students and my students. In my case, my students are both taking Canadian and Japanese curriculum at the same time unlike the students in his study pursue the only British (or England) curriculum. In terms of language, my students need to improve Japanese at the same level as the Japanese students in Japan while they also are learning English as a learning and teaching language. However, the students in his research. it is not clear whether if they (try to) retain or improve their mother tongue, and most of the students seem to be in beginner or intermediate level in English. Therefore, we are not sure how the bilingual students who have relatively high proficiency in both languages and continue to be influenced by bi-culture and bi-curriculum, interpret and work with word problems in each language. I suppose we can assign the students writing tasks of any mathematical activities and questions in addition to mathematical proofs and word problems. As Barwell mentions in this chapter, a writing task can improve the students’ language learning and understanding about the nature of mathematical thinking.