TWO PERSPECTIVES OF BILINGUAL STUDENTS LEARNING

In Australia there are many students in mathematics classrooms whose first language is not English. These Non English Speaking Background pupils learn their mathematics in a second or third language. Australian mathematics teachers have had little professional help with this teaching situation. Although a naive view may regard this situation as a particularly difficult learning environment for all bilingual students, the situation is more complicated. An analysis of students ’ performances suggests that the social situation of the two languages in question has a role to play, as does the competence that a student has in each language. The reasons why and when students use their languages to do mathematics is also explored in this paper. Australia has since 1888 been the recipient of immigrants. From 1945 to 1995 Britain has supplied the largest population group coming to Australia. In 1995/6 immigrants from New Zealand became the largest group entering Australia, and have remained so ever since. Although English language groups have always, and still constitute by far the largest number of arrivals in Australia (38.9 % in 1995), the number of non-English speaking immigrants entering Australia has continually risen since 1945