The situational factors on the learners’ language – the existence of different language styles in different mathematics classroom situations

Abstract

In the last decades, the role of language in mathematics and mathematics education has increasingly caught attention of many researchers in the field of education, teaching and linguistics. Within this context, a frequent use of the term ‘Academic Language’ (AL) is noticed. However, there is no universal definition of the exact meaning of AL. The presented research investigates the learners’ discourse competences within different situations and asks the following: How does the use of language and discourse change during different situations in the mathematics classroom? For this purpose, mathematics lessons of several classes have been video-recorded and selected passages have been analyzed by means of interactional analysis. Within the frame of this paper, some initial results of a grade one classroom will illuminate that the situation and visual aids play an important role in the use of (academic) language.