Why Is Math Easier For Chinese Kids?
By
Staten Island, NY Posted: 7/31/2017 1:00:00 AM
There's a reason why Chinese children learn math faster than Americans... it's all in the VOCABULARY!
When you see the number 15... what do you say? If you're an adult, you say "Fifteen", however a child will say "One Five", and that's where the problem starts.
Teaching written numbers to children starts off pretty easy:
1... One, 2... Two, 3... Three, 4... Four, 5... Five, 6... Six, 7... Seven, 8... Eight, 9... Nine.
Kids grasp that pretty easily, but that's where things start to get tricky, because as soon as you get to "Ten", things get pretty tricky. To a child 10 looks like "One Zero", 11 looks like "One One", 12 looks like "One Two"... etc. Our English math vocabulary keep changing through the teens, and they also need words for twenties, thirties, and everything up to the nineties.
Instead of focusing on the digits that were their basic building blocks, we've got to introduce them to a whole new vocabulary for every number combination going all the way to 100. It's not like that for Chinese children. Their math vocabulary is easier to learn and understand.
Chinese math starts off simple. They have digits, just like we do, but they don't have all that extra vocabulary for numbers over 10. The number 15 is read as "One Ten Five", 37 is read as "three ten seven".
The result is that children grasp the meaning of numbers faster. Adding 42 and 27 is easier for a Chinese child than an American because they read it as "four ten two + two ten 7". They don't see this as adding two large numbers, but rather as adding the number of tens plus the number of ones.
Thankfully, English math gets easier after 100, which reads just like Chinese numbers under 100. "105 = One hundred five", "407 = Four Hundred Seven". Unfortunately, you still end up with a mixture of hundreds with number under 100.
Joe Crescenzi, Founder
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