Examination of middle school students' skills to understand and use the language of mathematics

The mathematics education literature has shown that mathematics teachers believe mathematics learning is less dependent on language than other fields because mathematical concepts are universal and usually explained with numerical examples. Therefore, although many math teachers teach some math-specific concepts, vocabulary, and notation, they often need to explicitly teach students to read, write, or speak mathematically. However, the relationship between mathematics and language is inseparable for most mathematics students. For this reason, it is considered essential to research students' understanding of the language of mathematics. This research was conducted to examine secondary school students' ability to understand and use the language of mathematics. In the study, a survey model, one of the quantitative research designs, was used. Four hundred nine middle school students, 324 in the district centre and 85 in the village participated in the study. The study data were collected with the "The Scale of Comprehension and Use of Mathematics Language." Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the collected data. The current situation of the students was presented with descriptive statistics, and the variables affecting the ability to comprehend and use the language of mathematics were determined with predictive statistics. The result of the study shows that while middle school students' comprehension and use of mathematics language did not differ significantly according to the gender of the students, there are significant differences according to the place and class levels of the students. In addition, it was concluded that there is a positive and significant relationship between the students' Turkish and mathematics course final semester scores and their ability to understand and use the language of mathematics.