Author: Jenny Hwang

In today’s class (Oct.9^th, 2013), we briefly discussed about the ideal length of waiting time after asking questions to students, and opinions were voiced which ranged from “1 second” and “less than 30 seconds”, etc. After I heard some responses, I recalled my experiences from first and second school visits. I observed that, when they asked some questions, few students who are considered to be the smart ones in the class answered the questions right away. It seemed that students who were less prepared, but perfectly capable of answering the questions if given some time, did not get a chance to answer the questions at all. Immediately after hearing an answer from those select few, teachers would resume their lecture. On my own take as a student teacher without much teaching experience, I find that I often don’t know how much time I need to give to the student before answering the question myself. For me, it was very awkward standing in front of students, since I had no idea whether they were too shy to answer the question or actually didn’t know how to answer the question. So I answered the question myself right away which is probably not an ideal approach. Ironically, as a student, I would often find that before I could answer a teacher’s question, I would need more time than 1 second or 30 seconds because I needed to think exactly what I was asked and why I thought a particular answer was correct. Taking into consideration the accounts of both sides, I think teachers should give more time to students to promote their critical thinking and quality of their answers. However, It wouldn’t be easy to know whether the majority of class is ready to answer a question or not. Therefore, I think before we go on, it is better to ask students to write down some sentences about their thoughts. Then few smart students won’t dominate the class, and most students can have some time to think, and if they write things down they would have an easier time formulating their ideas and also they would be more likely to be engaged.

As my instructor talked about how hard it is to understand mathematics if students are not familiar with the language it is being taught in, I recalled my own experience of my first day in Grade 10 math class just after I immigrated to Canada. I didn’t know what SOH CAH TOA was since I learned it in different language even though I’ve already learned trigonometry in Korea before I came. I asked my classmates who were in the same ESL class with me what SOH CAH TOA was, and their answers were “I don’t know either.” I was embarrassed about the fact that the activities of that entire class were about solving problems using SOH CAH TOA. My classmates who didn’t understand what SOH CAH TOA stood for were doing homework from another class. I asked my teacher what SOH CAH TOA was, and he explained that it is a way of remembering how to compute the sine, cosine, and tangent of an angle, and that each acronym stood for something, like SOH being Sine equal Opposite over Hypotenuse. Even after realizing what SOH CAH TOA is, I felt that it was difficult because “Hypotenuse” was a new vocabulary to me. My math teacher realized that I was having trouble with English, not with Math. So, before he started his lessons, he drew a triangle, and he labelled it as opposite, adjacent and hypotenuse to visualize it, and he tried to simplify the questions with easier words when I encountered the word problems in class. Also, before the beginning of each lesson he made a worksheet full of terminologies we were going to learn with definitions, so I would have easier time in becoming familiar with those terminologies. He didn’t only focus on teaching mathematics, but he also helped me to learn English. Only now can I truly appreciate how what a considerable teacher he was in being encouraging and patient with me. It also goes to show that language can be a real barrier in teaching math, but that it can be overcome with the right effort and attitude in both the instructor and the student.