Interpreting symbolic statements as texts: an exploratory study

This paper is devoted to the problem of the interpretation of mathematical texts . Some ideas on mathematical language are shortly discussed with the help of some constructs from functional linguistics. Some evidence regarding the interpretation processes of a symbolic text by groups of 10-graders, including both written answers and the transcriptions of spoken interactions is presented and discussed. The outcomes of this study show that students often try to interpret mathematical statements according to everyday-life schemes. This suggests that in school practice mathematical expressions should be dealt with as texts (rather than as abbreviations or local conventions) and that metalinguistic awareness should become one of the the goals of both linguistic and mathematical education.