Is Math Just One Subject?

Earlier this week I had the privilege of attending the South Dakota STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Education conference in Huron, SD. I attended the conference with an open mindset of learning a lot of new things, however, one session, “Teaching Math as a Language,” left me questioning.  

The way the session opened was by comparing a math classroom to a language classroom. When he played the video of the language classroom, we were all a bit confused, as we had no idea what was going on. Later in the session, he presented an equation in slope form with a range of x-values. He then asked for volunteers to read the equation aloud. Two volunteers read the equation differently. At this point, I was confused about why or how they could read the equation differently.  

As a math education major, I adapted to the speech of math early on in life, but just like language classes, some people cannot adapt or process the language of math as easily. Translating math into language is a lot harder for kids; I have some younger siblings and I asked them to translate an equation for me. They also had three separate answers when reading the equation aloud (for reference there is a 7th grader, a sophomore, and a senior in high school).  

After witnessing this event happen two times in the same month with quite different people, I am curious how often kids struggle with translating a mathematical question and if they are struggling with just the basics of translation. Are they able to fully understand the concept of math? What if we started teaching the basics of how to pronounce equations in our lessons? How would this affect learning and the classrooms? Would this be beneficial, or would it take too much time out of the lesson and be too confusing?  

Referring to the session I attended, the presenter ended it with how he was teaching a lesson on chalkboard and one student was not writing anything down for the entire lesson. When he dismissed the class, he asked the student, “Why did you not write anything until the end of the lesson?” The student then responded, “I was trying to figure out how you wrote the curly bracket at the beginning of the lesson.” This brings us back to whether math should be taught as just a language or as a writing classroom. Is math just one subject? Do we need to teach math as multiple subjects so students can fully understand it?