Australian Review of Applied Linguistics - Volume 7, Issue 2, 1984

Hesitation phenomena are often omitted from language analyses, although there is evidence that these phenomena have definitive functions in communication. Analysis of these phenomena will provide information on the stability of particular linguistic features in a child’s language system, as well as evidence of learning of these features. Implications for intervention are discussed.

Pupils in junior primary school meet a large number of mathematical terms in their text books making the master of basic mathematics very difficult for pupils with less adequate language mastery. It was hypothesized that by Year 8, pupils attending a comprehensive high school would (1) show no sex differences in their comprehension of mathematical terms; but (2) pupils in the lowest Year 8 mathematics class would perform significantly worse on a mathematics comprehension test than pupils in the top class, revealing poor language rather than poor mathematical skills. Both hypotheses were supported. Further, the mean comprehension score for each graded mathematics class was significantly lower than the class just above the 1% level. Terms causing difficulty in the lower mathematics classes are discussed along with words generally not understood.