Languages
A problem on teaching fractions
01/28/2011
Below is what I heard from Immersion Yahoo group:
There's a difference between how Chinese and English say fractions.
For two-thirds, Chinese says "three parts of two," which is a way of saying "Of three parts, two of them."
So it could confusing American kids. Same situation happened to percents.
To express fractions and percents, Chinese uses the denominator followed by the two characters (fen1 zhi1, "parts of"), followed by the numerator. So two-thirds would be "three fen1zhi1 two". In the case of percents, you would say "hundred fen1zhi1 amount", e.g. the way to say 63% is "hundred fen1zhi1 six ten three"
How do you teach your students fractions?
Comments
Here is my thought:
Chinese views the denominator as a whole, and numerator as little parts that come from it. Chinese are used to say the whole amount first and then the little parts.
Maybe next time you can try to ask your students to image or recall the process of dividing a birthday cake whenever they come across expressing fractions and percents. The process normally would be like, the cake is intact in the beginning and then becomes pieces after dividing, so we see the cake as a whole one at first and then become little pieces; likewise, for fractions, Chinese say denominator first, then followed by fen1 zhi1, and finally followed by the numerator; for percents, Chinese say "hundred fen1zhi1 amount."
What do you think? I hope this can help, and I am looking forward to hearing your feedback!
very nice explanation, thank you very much for sharing your knowledge Joyce!
That's right. Teaching fractional expression to Chinese's students, especially for the kids may come up confusing for them. Because they have different way or sequence of reading and expressing things. Thank you for the explanations too. It gave me helpful insights. The next time I come up with this lesson, I will have to change the way I relate it to them. Bail Bonds