The Evaluation of Linguistic Difficulties in Mathematical Tasks

Abstract

Language requirements are an important aspect of differentiation of learning activities in teaching mathematics. The condition variable of linguistic competence significantly influences mathematical performance and is more important when compared to other background factors. The present article analyses the difficulties of written mathematical tasks by investigating different language genres. A genre is defined based on different features of the everyday-language, academic, and mathematics registers. The analysis is embedded within the research project ‘Evaluation of Linguistic Features of Difficulty in Mathematics’, the aim of which is to study difficulties in generating linguistic elements in mathematics. Principal component analysis is used for data reduction. It extracted a four-factor solution, and the respective dimensions were interpreted as (1) intentional everyday language, (2) extensional academic language, (3) extensional mathematical language, and (4) extensional representation. The results of the analysis serve as a starting point for further descriptive and empirical difficulty analysis of mathematical tasks. Furthermore, the results can be theoretically interpreted and conclusions can be drawn as to the influence of specific elements on text comprehension of mathematical tasks.