Putting It All Together: Integrating Academic Math Language into Math Teaching

So a more effective way to identify language problems is to examine textbooks or tests, looking for language that is potentially difficult. The examples in my last article can serve as a guide for the kinds of things to look for. Identifying difficult language items is fairly easy for people who have learned to look at language rather than look through it. Looking through language is like looking through a window. We look at whatever is on the other side of the window, and we aren't aware of seeing the glass itself. Language is like the glass in the window. We don't normally see it, because we look through it in order to see the meaning. Just as we have to refocus our eyes in order to see the glass itself, we also have to refocus our minds in order to see the language. Doing that will help us identify all of those idiomatic phrases, multiple-meaning words, words that carry relational meanings, complex sentence structures, and unknown references that make the language difficult for ELLs.