The assessment of mathematics vocabulary in the elementary and middle school grades

Abstract

Students use academic language, which involves vocabulary, grammatical structures, and linguistic functions, to learn knowledge and perform tasks in a specific discipline (e.g., mathematics; Cummins, 2000). Understanding these disciplinespecific ways of using language requires deep knowledge of discipline-specific content and a keen understanding connecting academic language to learning (Fang, 2012). Therefore, not surprisingly, academic language has been shown to be closely related to academic performance (Kleemans et al., 2018) and a significant predictor of academic achievement (Townsend et al., 2012). Mathematics, a challenging discipline for many students (Berch & Mazzocco, 2007), also develops academic language specific to the discipline, which is often referred to as mathematics language. Mathematics language is used to express mathematical ideas and to define mathematical concepts, and it can facilitate connections among different representations of mathematical ideas (Bruner, 1966). In this Introduction, we provide a definition of mathematics vocabulary and discuss the importance of understanding mathematics vocabulary. Then, we review why and how students experience difficulty with mathematics vocabulary. In the rest of the chapter, we describe the development and testing of several measures of mathematics vocabulary. These measures could be used by educators to understand which mathematics vocabulary cause difficulty for students and could be a focus of mathematics instruction.