The Influence of Mathematical Terminology on Students’ Achievement at the High School Level

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of mathematical terminology on students' achievement at the high school level. Descriptive research study was used for this research. Twelve high schools were randomly selected from four selected townships of four districts from Yangon Region. The target population was (600) Grade Ten students. As instruments, a mathematical terminology test and a mathematics achievement test were used. The mathematical terminology test was used to investigate Grade Ten students' understanding of mathematical terminology concerned with mathematical terms, mathematical symbols, and mathematical structures. It included (15) items for each dimension. The mathematics achievement test was used to explore Grade Ten students' mathematics achievement. It involved three sections: (11) multiple choice items, (3) short questions and (6) long questions. For obtaining reliability, the pilot test was administered. The internal consistency of the instruments were (.780) and (.805) by using Cronbach's Alpha. In order to know the correlation between students' understanding of mathematical terminology and their mathematics achievement, Pearson product-moment correlation was used. The correlation coefficient between students' understanding of mathematical terminology and their mathematics achievement was (.682). This result shows that students' understanding of mathematical terminology is positively related with their mathematics achievement. It means that if students' understanding of mathematical terminology is low, their mathematics achievement will be low. On the other hand, if students' understanding of mathematical terminology is high, their mathematics achievement will be high. To sum up, mathematical terminology influence on students' mathematics achievement at the high school level