Maths adds up for Welsh-speaking children

[Arawn]

Maths adds up for Welsh-speaking children

Children who speak Welsh at home and at school may find it easier to acquire some aspects of numeracy than their English-speaking counterparts, according to research carried out by Dr Ann Dowker of the Department of Experimental Psychology and Delyth Lloyd of St Hilda's College. The researchers attribute this finding to the fact that Welsh numbers are termed in a way which directly reflects the relationship between tens and units.

For example, the numbers 12, 20 and 23 are represented in Welsh by the more transparent number terms un deg dau ('one ten two'), dau ddeg ('two tens') and dau ddeg tri ('two tens three').

The research was carried out with three groups of six and eight-year-olds in South Wales. Some had Welsh as their first language and attended a Welsh-speaking school; some spoke mainly English but were educated in Welsh; and a third group spoke English at home and at school. All children were taught mathematics in the same way according to the British National Curriculum.

The Welsh-speaking children found it easier to read and compare two-digit numbers, indicating that they had a better understanding of place value than the purely English-speaking children.

Those who spoke Welsh both at home and at school did better than those who spoke it only at school. The findings are consistent with previous findings that Japanese, Korean and Chinese-speaking children, whose number terms have similar properties to those in Welsh, do well in a variety of mathematical tests. There are, however, many cultural and educational differences between children in England and in the Far East. In the present study, there were fewer cultural differences between the groups, making it more likely that the differences that were found were indeed due to the language.

source


Whilst this managed to make the pages of some Oxford publication (and nowhere else it seems), not much has done to link this to the slightly higher GCSE pass rate in Wales over the rest of the UK, i wonder how much this might be due to students in Welsh language schools in Wales having a slight edge in math due to the language.

[Awar]

Damned Elves