Speaking Mathanese

Kids butcher the Mathanese language.  I'm just sayin'.  We have all these kids who speak text just fine.  It seems to me that Mathanese should be right up their alley.  All we are doing is taking a bunch of words and converting it to symbols.  Should be easy, right?  Not so much. 

I find that kids have a tough time translating algebraic expressions to English and vice versa.  Am I alone? 

Yeah, didn't think so. 

One of the things that I have been trying to focus on this year is to convey to students the universality of the things they are learning.  For example, cause/effect in language arts becomes input/output in math.  Conflict resolution is the same as problem solving.  Language arts has expressions and sentences, so does math.  Scientific method can compare to making a conjecture in geometry, testing it out and then using inductive logic to arrive at a conclusion (read: rule). 

So what happens when you tell them to translate: the product of 3 and the sum of x and 2?

You get: 3x+2, right? 

Not quite. 

Well I figured we needed to develop a mashup of English and Mathanese; Mathglish, if you will.  Here is what we came up with:

English to Mathanese:

[caption id="attachment_458" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="This should read: The product of 2 and the sum of the product of 4 and x and 3. "][/caption]

Mathanese to English:



The key this time was to allow the mashup.  I live in a rural area where the Spanish speaking population is very large.  Many of my kids speak and understand Spanglish.  I have never done it this way before and the kids nailed it. 

How do you do it?

Update:  Just did a quick check for understanding 2nd period and  26/28 kids circled the bases.