Comparisons of Children's Cognitive Representation of Number: China, France, Japan, Korea, Sweden, and the United States

Cross-national comparisons of mathematics achievement have shown differences in favour of Asian students. This study examined the idea that the superior mathematics performance of students from Japan, Korea, and China may be due, in part, to differences in cognitive representation of number that is affected by numerical language characteristics differentiating Asian and non-Asian language groups. First-graders from the People's Republic of China, Japan, Korea, France, Sweden, and the United States were asked to construct various numbers using Base 10 blocks. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean children showed a preference for using a construction of tens and ones to show numbers; place value appeared to be clearly represented in those constructions. French, Swedish, and US children, in contrast, showed a preference for using a collection of units, suggesting that they represent number as a grouping of counted objects. More Asianlanguage speakers than non-Asian-language speakers were also able to make two correct constructions for each number, which suggests greater flexibility of mental number manipulation. Thus, the unique characteristics of the Asian number language system may facilitate the teaching and learning of mathematics, especially computation, for speakers of those languages.

Language supports for children's understanding of numerical fractions: cross-national comparisons

This study examined Croatian, Korean, and U.S. children's knowledge of numerical fractions prior to school instruction. The research is part of an ongoing project examining the influence of language characteristics on mathematical thinking and performance. The part-whole quantitative relation denoted by numerical fractions may be easier to understand in East Asian languages like Korean. In these languages, the concept of fractional parts is embedded in the mathematics terms used for fractions. The results from this study suggest that the Korean vocabulary of fractions may influence the meaning 6- to 7-year-old children ascribe to numerical fractions and that this results in children being able to associate numerical fractions with corresponding pictorial representations prior to formal instruction.