In India, on December 22, National Mathematics Day (NMD) is celebrated to remeber and honour the birth anniversary of mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan who was modest and devoted his life to solving mathematical problems and language of mathematics.
Here, on NMD-2020, I reproduce my article "PAY ATTENTION TO MATHEMATIZATION OF LANGUAGE TO MAKE MATHEMATICS LEARNING EFFECTIVE AND GENDER INCLUSIVE" from original source: U4U Voice-2014, and then disseminated through slideshare.net.
-“Mathematical language becomes difficult to understand by students if attention is not paid right from grade one. Unfortunately in an environment that is promoting rule-method of learning maths or ‘Parrort Maths’, it has been found that most students are unable to solve word-problems and applied mathematics problems,” said mathematics educator Dr. Lalit Kishore at three-day International Children’s Science and Mathematics Festival (November 13-15, 2014) in Vishakhapatnam hosted by Sri Prakash Vidyaniketan.
Describing the language of mathematics as a system used by students of mathematics and mathematicians to communicate mathematical ideas among themselves, he said that this language consists of a substrate of some natural language along with technical terms and grammatical conventions that are peculiar to mathematical discourse. According to him, mathematical language is a system of words and symbols used in the study of mathematics and its communication.
He stressed that in teacher training programmes and during classroom teaching of mathematics due attention needs to be paid to learn at the mastery level vocabulary of symbols or words; mathematical grammar consisting of rules of how these symbols may be used, and a range of meanings that can be communicated with standard symbols.
The inappropriate mathematical language use; ignoring the vocabulary of mathematics; lack of emphasis on reading and writing of mathematics and skipping the process of meaning making of formulae and notation of mathematics can lead to disinterest in mathematics by students and more so by the girls students.
“Like any other profession, mathematics also has its own brand of technical terminology. In some cases, a word in general usage has a different and specific meaning within mathematics—examples are group, ring, field, category, term, and factor,” he exemplified. Also, attention was drawn to the stock phrases in mathematics, used with specific meanings, such as ‘if and only if’, ‘necessary and sufficient’ and ‘without loss of generality’, he said. Before beginning a lesson the mathematics language with some vocabulary building was needed to be stresses along with reading and writing exercises, he suggested.
He concluded that stress on mathematization of language and math literacy can lead to make learning of mathematics effective and gender inclusive.
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