ABSTRACT
In contexts of learning mathematics in English in multilingual classrooms, with difficulties identified with specialization of mathematical content, the demands on teacher's mathematical discourse in instruction (MDI) are significant. The central concerns of this chapter are the examples and accompanying explanations teachers offer as they elaborate mathematical ideas in their classrooms. The chapter focuses on words and narratives, in more detail that the accompanying explanations did not constitute these as a continuous sequence of various products, but rather discretely as 'exponents', 'multiplying expressions' and the 'distributive law'. It explores a teacher's MDI in an algebra lesson that forms part of the data set in the Wits Maths Connect Secondary (WMCS) project, a 5-year research and development project working with eleven Johannesburg secondary schools. While typical in form of many school algebra lessons, this lesson also stands in contrast to reports on mathematics classroom practice in disadvantaged schools in South Africa that are constituted by slow pacing, and limited examples.
