Role of Language in Children\'s Early Number

Role of Language in Children's Early Number Development

Language Development in Children

The Role of Language in Children's Early Number Development

The Role of Language in Children's Early Number Development

Language and communication are an essential part of one's life. There is hardly anything more remarkable than the way a child utters his first complete words and how they change into phrases and eventually, dialogues or sentences in just a short matter of time. Language plays a very significant role in the childhood learning processes. The development of language in children starts even before their birth and as they grow up, their vocabulary and language skills build up at an incredible pace. When it comes to learning numbers and applying the concept in later life, language again has a vital role to play. Although, that role is difficult to isolate, research has still provided distinctive evidences as to how language helps in developing a child's mathematical understanding.

It has been more than about twenty years since the council of mathematics teachers of the United States admitted to the idea of maths and literature being entwined. This is because maths itself is considered a language and to teach it properly, one must take use of the language the child is familiar with so that he/she is able to grasp the concept of the idea being taught (Martinez, 2001). If that is not done, it would be very difficult for the children to excel in their mathematical skills in later school years because for a three-year-old, reading mathematics text is just like reading a Chinese or Japanese book for us. In case of numerical learning, the children are expected to read, write and speak the terms and numbers which are certainly impossible without the use of language. There are some educationists also of the opinion that language and vocabulary are also required for communicating effectively and building the confidence of the children in a mathematics class; any child deprived of it is most certainly handicapped (Monroe & Orme, 2002) (Miller, 1993).

A child develops the idea of the language of counting and numbers at the basic age of two or three. They do so by memorizing the basic first numbers and then learning how to use them in generating 'big' numbers (Ginsburg, 1989). There are some who hold the idea that mathematical education is also language education and that 'doing mathematics is actually doing language as well'. This is because many words of mathematics are so pervasive that it seems that they belong to the literature and language used every day. So there is no doubt that as a child becomes increasingly proficient in his/her language, his/her mathematical abilities are also polished. This is because being able to verbalize the things they learn in maths makes it simpler and easier for them to do well in them. Also, without the use of language, it is clearly impossible to justify the mathematical ideas that the teachers are to deliver to the children (Kuhn, 2000).

The subject of mathematics has a specific vocabulary which had posed a challenge to the educators had the use of language in mathematical teaching not been so prevalent. Many teachers have concluded that when taught well, students of many preschools take great interest in learning and writing numbers. Moreover, although the principles and rules of numerical counting are fairly constant worldwide, the number system and language with which they are taught varies from place to place, country to country. A detailed analysis of this idea has showed that schools that use a rather 'word-rich' environment are able to produce more maths geniuses than schools where use of language is limited and often incorrect in regard to the subject. Another reason for such variation in the calculating capabilities of the children is the difference between the linguistic characteristics of the numeration systems of their country and the structural features of the numbers themselves. For example, in various Asian languages, 15 is read aloud as 'ten five' which is clearly different from the European and the American systems where it is simply spoken as fifteen. Studies have shown that children studying in a system where the language structure is in closely associated with the numerical one develop better concept and understanding of the subject. As a result, Asian children are quicker at learning the place values of the numbers and hence, calculations than European and American children (Fuson & Kwon, 1991, 1992).

It has been observed that development of numerical understanding is very challenging for children who have some sort of Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Statistical analysis shows that about 7 to 8% of the world's children aged between five and six years face this dilemma and they have trouble learning the number sequences (Bishop, 1997) (Tomblin, Smith, & Zhang, 1997). A study showed that such children could only recite the correct number sequence upto six while their age fellows and peers could accurately do it till beyond 20 or so (Fazio, 1994). However, when it came to solving arithmetical problems, the children with SLI produced results similar to those of their age fellows. Such evidences have helped in concluding that language development has a greater role in verbal mathematics than written.