ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we review our collaborative efforts with colleagues around the world to examine the influence of language characteristics on children’s mathematics understanding and performance. Using cross-national comparisons of numerical language characteristics and children’s related mathematical activities, we have attempted to explain the often-reported superior achievement of students from Asian countries (e.g., Lapointe, Mead, & Philips, 1989; McKnight et al., 1987; Stevenson, Lee, & Stigler, 1986; Third International Math and Science Study, 1996) from a language-based perspective. Variations in home and school experiences (CSU Institute for Educational Reform, 1997; Hess, Chang, & McDevitt, 1987; Mordkowitz & Ginsburg, 1987; Stevenson & Stigler, 1992) are typically given as explanations for these achievement differences, and their influence cannot be discounted. However, Asian children demonstrate superior performance on measures of mathematical skills such as verbal counting (Miller, Smith, Zhu, & Zhang, 1995), base-ten understanding (Miura, Okamoto, Kim, Steere, & Fayol, 1993; Song & Ginsburg, 1987), and place-value understanding (Miura et al., 1993) before teaching effectiveness and other school-related factors come into play. We suggest that numerical language characteristics may also be a factor in the superior mathematics performance exhibited by Asian-language speakers (Miura, 1987; Miura & Okamoto, 1989; Miura et al., 1993).
