Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi,

I have a student who is in Junior High at an international school. She needs improve her knowledge of English mathematical terms.

My problem is that I have never taught a student English for Mathematics. I know I can just teach her the words, but that is boring to say the least. It would be better if I could improve here knowledge of mathematical terms through games. So does anyone have any good links or ideas on teaching mathematical terms to my student.

BTW She is currently studying Pythagoras Theorm, Area, Volumes, Sin, Co-sin etc. My knowledge of math ended a longtime ago, so I am having to study as well.

Thanks for any help.

Mike

You should be aware of another problem. That is that the language used to express math can be quite complicated. Here is a simple example:
Let f:S->T be a map between sets. Then f is called "onto" if, for each point t in T, there is a corresponding point s in S such that f(s) = t.
I imagine that, if I were learning Chinese say, and came across a paragraph like this, it would be quite difficult to get the language sorted out. And without that, studying math becomes impossible.
And that was just a simple example.

For more advanced math terms, I don't know as such. Although being able to express any math term within a grammatically correct English sentence has its varying levels of complexity.

You can check out some fun math sites on my resource site below. Check for 'G' for 'games' and 'K' for 'kids'. There's also a very old book available as a free e-book on the Gutenberg site (also on my site under e-books) which contains a volume of about 100 complicated classic brain-teaser style math problems.

My resources site: http://esl-teaching-resources.blogspot.com

hi canibu2, i have the same problem as a youas a new teacher for English for mathematics. i hope we could exchange experiences with each other about problems in the class. i only know this ESP for just a couple of days. if anyone could share their comments as a new teacher at ESP

Hello All, Just now I came across this math tutoring site http://www.esumz.com, that will help our kids to improve their skills in math.