From: math1pu@elroy.uh.edu  (Douglas Luo)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china
Subject: Re: Link bet'n math skill and linguistic characteristics
Date: 5 Jan 1993 11:22 CST
Organization: University of Houston
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: elroy.uh.edu
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

In article <1993Jan04.234507.381076@sue.cc.uregina.ca>, guohsu@mercury.cs.uregina.ca (Allen G.C. Hsu) writes...
>In article <1993Jan4.165219.13862@dsg.tandem.com> leung@DSG.Tandem.COM (Steven Leung) writes:
>>
>>This is from CND:
>>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>4. Newsfeature: Study Says Math Easier in Chinese ....................... 78
>>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>COLUMBIA, Mo. U.S.A. -- Little Johnny can't add as quickly as students in
>>China because his language has more tongue-tying arithmetic words, a new
>>study suggests.
>> 
>>And even the slight difference between the pronunciation of the Chinese word
>>"yi" and its English translation "one" contributes to a math gap that the
>>study says puts China's elementary school students ahead of those in the
>>United States.
>> 
>>The study, believed to be the first linking language and math skills, was
>>part of a three-year collaboration by researchers at the University of Mis-
>>souri in Columbia and China's national Institute for Educational Science in
>>Beijing. They've been observing groups of kindergartners and first graders
>>in each country.
>>
>>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>Well, as chinese, I guess we'd feel flattered by such researches. However,
>>I have some problems with their approach. I don't doubt that there are
>>certain facts such as average number of repeated digits or numbers of solved
>>problems etc., but the interpretation of these statistics seems to be pretty
>>simpler lingustic characteristic of a language gives one an edge in math
> 
>(deleted)
>>
>>Steven
>  
>  I wonder why don't they conduct their research for the Chinese who were
>  born in the US and use English as their first language? I know that many
>  of them have high performance in school, where there is no language
>  "advantage" for them. There may be some other reasons.
> 
> 
>Guo-Ching Hsu    -- guohsu@cs.uregina.ca 
>            ----------------------------------
>                     DUM VIVIMUS VIVAMUS
>            ----------------------------------

As a mathematician I'd like to voice my personal opinion on this matter.
First of all, I have no reason to believe that those people at Univ of
Missouri know what they are talking about. I honestly believe that the fact
that Chinese students seem to do better in math than their American conterparts
only has to do with their attitude torwards the subject. Secondly, it is well
known that areas like Algebra, Topology (both point-set and algebraic), and
Differential Geometry etc. are pretty new to Chinese mathematicians. One, 
however, can safely say that the day that China rises as a math superpower
is not far from reach.

YL

SOMETIMES I THINK I LEARN MORE IF I CLOSE ALL MY BOOKS.


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