ABSTRACT
The purpose of symbolic decoding is the symbol naming. Students who are proficient at symbolic decoding are not necessarily mathematically proficient. Symbolic decoding does not correlate with understanding symbol meaning. The symbol-by-symbol decoding, a common practice in many classrooms, does not develop an understanding of the numbers or place value, or connect to prior work with common fractions. To build conceptual understandings of the operations, students and teachers need to use conceptual language translations of symbolic representations. One can use symbolic decoding and dramatically increase the use of conceptual language translations. But People need to dramatically decrease the amount of time that we use symbolic decoding and dramatically increase the use of conceptual language translations. A lack of conceptual language fluency can impact the understanding of algebraic expressions, equations, and inequalities that students are asked to solve as they progress in mathematics. As algebraic representations become more complex, conceptual language translations are even more important.
