Strengthen High School Students Use Mathematical Set Of Vocabulary Words To Communicate Exploration

The focus on mathematical communication has become a new trend in curriculumdevelopment among countries in the world. Mathematical communication is anessential part of mathematical teaching and learning. In mathematical education, usingset language as a carrier of mathematical communication is a very important method.As a science language, set language is powerful, concise and accurate tool used forcommunicating mathematical information, and it also provides a very effective wayfor interpersonal communication and academic exchanges. So, it’s not only required todevelop and strengthen the abilities of high school students to convert set language,but also develop the abilities of high school students to use set language to expresstheir ideas and point of views accurately and concisely.Based on the study of many documents related to set language and mathematicalcommunication, the paper summarizes the related theories using document analysismethod. Firstly, the paper identifies the concepts related to the mathematicalcommunication in set language: the concepts of set language, the concepts ofmathematical communication, the connotations of the mathematical communication inset language, levels and theory foundations, and it elucidates the background andstatus quo of using set language for mathematical communication, which reflects theimportance and necessity of this study.Secondly, through an Empirical Research surveying and analyzing the status quoof the use of set language during mathematical communication among high schoolstudents, the paper summarizes the issues that relate to identifying, understanding,converting and building set language when high school students using set languagefor mathematical communication. The main issues with regard to identification levelof set language include: confusing about the symbolic representation of common usednumber sets; having only a superficial knowledge of the symbols about collectionsand collection relationships; and lacking of accuracy in the expression of writtenlanguage. The main issues with regard to the understanding level of set languageinclude: lacking of understanding on some mathematical keywords; lacking ofaccuracy or depth with regard to understanding the relation between informationblocks. The main issues with regard to the conversion level of set language include: lacking of awareness on conversions between various of forms of set languages;having awareness, but lacking of accuracy when converting; lacking of consistencybetween the expression in text set language and the actual understanding in mind;having little interest or paying no attention to the subject of converting to textlanguage. The main issues with regard to the construction level of set languageinclude: lacking of the awareness that constructing a problem as a set problem andleveraging the knowledge of sets to solve it.Thirdly, the paper conducts a cause analysis on these issues, presenting athorough understanding on the status quo of the use of set language duringmathematical communication among high school students.The major reasons of thosemain issues with regard to the identification level of set language are: the students feelthat the set language is too abstract, they don’t know the forms and origin of setsymbols and are lack of the desired thinking ability, thus they think set language isdull; teachers rarely explain the origin and backgrounds of set symbols, they ignorethe teaching on set language, and pay no attention to the accuracy and preciseness ofthe text language expression of students and themselves. The major reasons of thoseissues regard to the understanding level of set language are: negative transfer of lifelanguage and legacy knowledge; ignoring the semantic structure of set language. Themajor reasons of those issues regard to the conversion level of set language are: highschool grade one students are lack of abstract epitome ability; their knowledge on setlanguage isn’t well established; both teachers and students pay little attention to theaccuracy of the text expression of set language; they are lack of training on theconversion between three forms of set languages. The major reasons of those issuesregard to the construction level of set language are: some students have weakmathematical thinking abilities, they are lack of flexibility to leverage the knowledgeof sets, and their teachers rarely provides instructions on such areas.After synthesizing how high school students using set language for mathematicalcommunication and the status quo of mathematical education on the teachers’ side, thepaper gives some teaching suggestions. Firstly, correctly understand the importance ofset language. This requires introducing the background of set symbols, normalizingthe read and write of set language symbols, emphasizing the teaching and learning onthe semantic structure of set language, and strengthening the training on the students’abilities of Saying and Writing. Secondly, pay attention to the issues occurred whenstudents communicating in set language. This requires identifying these issues early, and strengthening the exercises on the translation between three forms of set language.Last but not least, lay emphasis on developing and training the mind habits of studentswhen they learning set language.