The language of mathematics at the transition

This chapter reviews the literature relating to teaching and learning the language of mathematics and presents key feature and keywords analyses in the Key Stage 2 (KS2) and Key Stage 3 (KS3) mathematics sub-corpora. Key feature analysis showed that the language of KS2 and KS3 mathematics teaching reflects the current guidance and policy for mathematics education with regard to topics like comparison and algebra. Mathematical symbols, nominalisations and gerunds/present participles were found to be more frequent in the KS3 mathematics sub-corpus than in the KS2 mathematics sub-corpus. KS3 mathematics is more multisemiotic and involves more abstract language than KS2 mathematics. Keywords analysis showed that KS3 mathematics relied on polysemous words that were used with domain-specific meanings, abstract concepts and more phrasal language features to a greater extent than KS2 mathematics. These features of language require complex processing and may be unfamiliar to many secondary students in Year 7. This constellation of complex linguistic features may make accessing mathematics more challenging for students at the beginning of secondary school.