Linguistics activity as a subject taught in mathematics at primary school

Abstract

The aim of this research is to examine the difficulties that pupils find and the linguistic features regarding their performance in a 6th grade course where mathematics and language contents are articulated. Half of pupils have the whole curriculum in a foreign language (Basque). In this sense, we have analysed the interactions among teachers and pupils, with attention on pupils’ difficulties and their teachers’ help. This research is based on the hypothesis that language is learned in demarcated social environments and that learning tasks that pupils carry out in such environments can take on two dimensions of the teaching-learning process: the «subject dimension» and «the language dimension» (Snow, Met and Genesse, 1989; Navés and Muñoz, 2011). We share with Bakthine (1982) the assumption that different knowledge areas have historically constructed specific social genres. The findings show that pupils have difficulties to provide reflective answers and to argue them. Moreover, they show that teachers’ profile and their help are useful to the pupil for overcoming the difficulties found in the two contents articulated.