Language issues, ‘‘misconceptions’’ and confusion: A qualitative analysis of KZN grade 6 learners’ responses on a mathematics test

Abstract

Language is a recognised factor in the performance and learning of South African learners, the majority of whom are schooled in a language other than their mother tongue. In this paper, we interrogate grade 6 learners’ answers to 40 questions across the mathematics curriculum qualitatively. Learners from a stratified random sample of public schools in the Umgungundlovu district in KwaZulu-Natal were given a questionnaire on their personal circumstances and a test on mathematical knowledge, mostly from the grade 5 curriculum. They wrote the test at the beginning of grade 6 school year. A quantitative analysis of the results indicated that English home language learners can be expected to score 14.5 percentage points higher on the learner maths test than non-English home language learners, after socio-economic status has been accounted for. However, correlating the difficulty of the question formulation with learner performance did not show any significant correlations. In order to understand further how language, learning and test performance relate, we analysed all learner responses, correct and incorrect, where there was a substantial difference in how favoured they were by English and non- English speaking learners. We found that learners with a home language other than English made more mistakes in interpreting the questions as well as displayed more “misconceptions”.

Keywords:

• Language issues
• mathematic curriculum
• mathematical knowledge
• learner performance