Summary:
The paper reviews psycholinguistics research & sociolinguistic research to consider how these two sets of research may be relevant to the study of bilingual mathematics learners using two languages. The author argues that psycholinguistics views language as an individual cognitive phenomenon and uses the term "language switching" to refer to the use of two languages during solitary and/or mental arithmetic computation. On the other hand, she also gives the definition of "code switching" from a sociolinguistic perspective, reserving "code switching" to refer to using two languages during conversations.
By studying psycholinguistic research, Moschkovich suggests that classroom instruction should allow bilingual students to choose the language they prefer for carrying out an arithmetic computation, either orally or in writing. Moschkovich analyzes a mathematical conversation between two bilingual students from a sociolinguistics perspective, finding that code switching can provide resources not only vocabulary but also phrases from the mathematics register in two languages and multiple ways to participate in mathematical discourse practices.
Three Stops:
1. I am not sure I should consider myself bilingual (English-Chinese) or trilingual (English-Cantonese-Mandarin). Although Cantonese and Mandarin share the same Chinese characters, their pronunciations are totally different. My grandparents are Cantonese speakers, but they have no idea of Mandarin. In addition, my friends whose first language is Mandarin can't understand Cantonese at all. The one that used to get me was that among the Chinese community especially the overseas Chinese, knowing Cantonese and Mandarin would be considered as an ability to use two different languages. However, in the western world, they don't really care if you know how many different Chinese dialects. Cantonese and Mandarin both are Chinese, one language. Sometimes I get my wires crossed when I speak Mandarin as my first language is Cantonese.
I can recall one funny experience, that was a time I need to give my ID number (consisting of 18 digits) to the school administrator. I failed to read out my ID number in Mandarin, then I had to write down my ID number on paper and hand it over to the administrator. I am pretty sure I would have difficulty reading out my ID number in English nowadays, it's a hard job!
This quote resonates with me "It may seem reasonable to conclude that a word in language A in the middle of an utterance in language B means that the speaker does not know or cannot retrieve that word in language B". I had English-based mathematics courses when I went to college, there were so many terminologies that I was strange. At that time, I just ascribed delays in responding to "not knowing the math facts". In fact, I knew that math fact, but not in English!
2. Spanish shows a pattern of loss from one generation to another (Tse, 2001).
Cantonese faces the same situation as Spanish nowadays. When I was a child, my teachers were accustomed to speaking Cantonese inside or outside the classroom. My grandmother told me they even had a national anthem in Cantonese version in their time. At some point, Mandarin became the "standard" language. All teachers and students were required to speak Mandarin on campus otherwise they would get warnings. How ridiculous! I agree with Moschkovich's view that classroom instruction should allow bilingual students to choose the language they prefer for carrying out communications.
3. Bilingual students' use of gestures to convey mathematics meaning has been documented in several studies (for example, Moschkovich, 1999, 2002).
Although the research of the gestures is not the key point in this article, I think it's worthy to explore this phenomenon. I notice myself using a lot of gestures while speaking English. I don't have that many gestures when I speak Chinese. Gestures are often used while speaking to aid in the speaker's packaging of the verbal message and/or to aid the listener in decoding the message (Nicoladis, 2007). Maybe, I am not confident enough when I speak English, using gestures as a complement for the listeners to understand my words.
Questions:
Do you think retrieval, response, or solution times may be slower or faster when bilinguals are not using their preferred language or are asked to switch from one language to another in your classroom? How do you help bilinguals out when they have difficulties understanding or phrasing mathematical discourses?
Thanks Erica for the great summary and points to consider. Your question is really interesting and makes me think about the multicultural classrooms where many students are multilingual rather than bilingual. There must be a reliability in classrooms that each student found sufficient time to express his/her feelings to the next person in their language. It is challenging sometimes to convey the same message of what you think in your own local language to others in their language. I think deciding the intelligence or creativity on the fact that students could not express themselves properly would not be fair enough; teachers could find a mid-way to express or communicate with some other ways (as working with concrete material, speaking through emotions, set-up a comfortability level and so on) which can help a child to manage effectively in multilingual classroom.
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