Assignment 8.3: Developing Numeracy Skills

Introduction to Numeracy

In response to The Leitch Review of Skills (2006), which reported that half of all adults in the UK have “difficulty with number and one seventh (5 million) are not functionally literate,” the British government’s target is for 90% of adults to have obtained a Level 2 Numeracy qualification by 2020. As part of this strategy numeracy is no longer seen as something to be left to specialised providers alone: best practice now promotes embedding of numeracy work into ESOL course and lesson planning. The challenge for language teachers, some of whom may lack confidence in their own numeracy abilities, is to ensure tasks are "relevant, contextualized, and essentially linked to overall literacy". (Stoudt, 1994)

Outside the classroom, our students’ problems with numeracy can pose as many difficulties as their struggles with the language. In everyday tasks such as shopping, calculating bills and expenses, budgeting and telling the time, learners need numeracy every bit as much as literacy skills.

Numeracy Issues Affecting ESOL Learners

Numeracy is intrinsic to ESOL classes at all levels. Page numbers are part of basic classroom language; pre-Entry classes include oral and written work on numerals in addresses, telephone numbers, dates and telling the time; elementary learners are taught quantifiers when studying countable and uncountable nouns, and practise reading public transport timetables and mail-order catalogues; our higher-level students work on understanding statistics in informative writing.

In common with all numeracy learners, ESOL students are affected by social and personal factors such as education, age and confidence – particularly in the case of those students with no formal education in their first language.

Breaking the Language Barriers (2000) identified a number of additional, and at times very specific, even highly numerate ESOL learners have to overcome, for instance “the need to learn English mathematical terms and conventions…and the complexity of the language surrounding assessment tasks and tests”: a learner may well understand the numeric form of 2 + 2 = 4 but not the English expression two plus two equals four. In many cultures, large numbers such as 10,000 are divided using points rather than commas; where English uses points to divide pounds and pence, many languages use commas. Learners from the Indian subcontinent group numbers by two decimal places not three (ten million is written as 1,00,00,000) and count in lakhs (one hundred thousands) and crores (ten millions). Similarly, Chinese and Korean students would expect the number 1,000,000 to be prefaced by one hundred (representing blocks of ten thousand) rather than one.

Another example of (British) English mathematical conventions is the writing of dates with the day and month preceding the year, which would appear back-to-front for speakers of many languages (including American English). For learners from countries such as Iran and China, the New Year does not start on January 1st. Time, too, is subject to cultural differences. Not all students will recognise the use of the twenty four hour clock in transport timetables, or the concept of counting up to the next hour (7.45 becoming quarter to eight).

Embedding Numeracy in ESOL

Text 1: Bus Timetable (Entry Level 2 / 3)

Learners are required to read and listen for times using the twenty-four hour clock (MSS1/L1.2), find and recognise bus numbers in tables arranged in rows and columns (HD1/E2.1) and calculate costs (MSS1/E2.2). Potential problems for learners with poor numeracy skills include converting the twenty-four clock into am and pm, being able to pronounce and understand oral representations of the time, calculating fares for more than one person (or between different stops) and locating information by reading bus numbers horizontally at the same time as finding times listed vertically.

Pre-reading: Elicit nearby tourist attractions. Students discuss places they have visited. Feedback – show pictures of Hadrian’s Wall. Ask students if they’ve ever been there. If not, would they like to go? Elicit kinds of public transport we could use to travel to the wall.

Gist reading: Tell students I’m planning a class trip to Hadrian’s Wall next Wednesday. Elicit what time students need to leave and return to pick up children and prepare for work. Hand out bus timetable. Students read and find out whether it’s possible to visit a place on the wall and return within the necessary time. In the feedback, elicit pronunciation of twenty-four hour clock times such as eighteen oh-five.

Detailed reading: Present questions in true or false, multiple choice or read and find the answer form. Students could be asked to find out times of specific buses, fares for individuals and groups, days and times where buses operate or not, or the distance between different stops.

Post-reading: Students roleplay asking for bus information using functional expressions such as What time is the first / next / last bus to…..? How much is it to…..? and What number bus goes to…..?

Text 2: Extracting Data From Pie Chart (Level 1 / 2)

Learners practise extracting data from graphic representations (in this case a pie chart) and texts (N1/L1.1; N2/E3.2; HD1/E3.1), converting numbers into different forms such as fractions and percentages (N1/L1.1; N2/L1.1, and presenting findings in written and numeric form (HD1/E3.3; HD1/E3.4). Students with poor numeracy skills would find the volume of numeric terms in the text difficult to decipher, especially when asked to convert the figures in the guided practice. For instance, the phrase 89% are in bed by 1am becomes Only one in ten people go to bed later than 1am in the practice exercise. Weaker students might also be confused by the combination of the text and pie chart. While the graphic representation may help learners in the presentation, dividing a circle into approximate areas could pose difficulties in the production stage. Prior to this, students would also need help when translating the results of the interviews into percentages and fractions.

Lead-in In pairs, students discuss how they usually spend their time. What do you usually do in your free time? What would you like to do more often? Feedback and ask students how they think British people spend their time. Hand out questionnaires. Students predict answers in pairs.

Presentation Put simple pie chart on board. Elicit how information is displayed. Hand out text. Students find the answers to the questions using the text and pie chart. Check answers open-class.

Guided Practice Board first sentence and elicit thirty-three per cent. Ask students if they know any other way of expressing this percentage (one third). Students work in pairs to complete the sentence with the correct phrases, referring back to the text and pie chart if necessary.

Freer Practice Put the students into small groups and ask them to design their own questionnaire on free time habits. Interview classmates and write out findings in a short text and/or pie chart.

Text 3: Describing Changes (Level 1)

Learners listen for expressions used to describe changes in data (N2/L1.8), extract information from bar charts (HD1/E3.1; HD1/L1.1) and practise describing changes in written form(HD1/L1.2; N2/L1.8). Learners with poor numeracy skills would find it difficult to extract information from the bar charts and understand the numerical relationships between different dates and points. Unless need to be able to understand the individual pieces of data before they begin to compare them.

Lead-in: Students discuss the qualities they would look for in a husband/wife. Conduct feedback and elicit opinions about what makes a happy marriage. Tell students the UK has the highest divorce rate in Britain. Why do they think this is?

1st Listening: Listen to four people explaining why the divorce rate is so high. Are there ideas the same as yours? Compare with your partners.

2nd Listening: Hand out gapped sentences. Students predict missing words then listen and check. Conduct feedback and highlight use of increasing to describe change.

Presentation: Elicit which of the words and phrases in the gaps mean to increase and which have the opposite meaning. Hand out table with more expressions. In pairs, students fill in the chart. Conduct feedback and drill pronunciation.

Guided Practice: Focus on bar chart showing divorce rate. Elicit past tense of verbs in the chart. Ask students to quickly describe what they can see. Focus on written description. Students work in pairs to complete the text. Feedback and highlight prepositions: in 1961; from 1961 to 1981; increased by 10%.

Less Guided Practice: Hand out bar chart showing marriage rate in same period. Students compose a short text describing the changes, using previous exercise as a model.

Freer Practice: Elicit other possible changes (birth rate; unemployment; population). Students research Britain or their own country on the internet and compose a short text and/or bar chart to present their findings.

Text 4: Daily Routines (Pre-Entry / Entry 1)

Learners practise asking about, listening to and writing down the times of day they do regular actions (MSS1/E1.2; HD1/E1.3; N1/E1.2; N1/E2.2). Learners with poor numeracy might be unable to pronounce, write or understand their partner’s pronunciation of the numerals. In mixed-ability classes, stronger students might present the time as seven-thirty or half past seven, confusing weaker students. The ordering of events in terms of clock time could also lead to confusion.

Lead-in: Show students pictures of common activities (getting up; having breakfast; going to school). Elicit vocabulary.

Presentation: Hand out pictures to students and ask them to order in terms of the time of day they do each action. Conduct feedback.
Board clock and elicit times. Tell students I get up at seven o’clock and drill pronunciation. Ask students what time they get up. Continue with other actions.

Guided Practice: Students interview partners. Conduct feedback.

Less Guided Practice: Students mingle and ask classmates questions to complete questionnaire.

Evaluation of Lesson

The lesson was taught to a Level 1 class. The learners had strong literacy skills and all had studied Numeracy previously, either at school in their own countries or in the UK as part of Basic Skills courses.

The lead-in generated interest in the topic and a number of successful predictions, which made the listening tasks much more achievable. The students were able to correctly categorize and pronounce the expressions from the listening. However, when focusing on the bar graph I did not sufficiently highlight the fact that each number referred to thousands of units. Some of the students therefore interpreted the data as 140 rather than 140,000. I dealt with this in the feedback, having already elicited the use of about, over and nearly to give approximations. Although I was worried that the less-guided practice would seem repetitive, the students found the task challenging – particularly when combining prepositions with numerals and the phrases describing change (went down by 10,000; reached a peak of 380,000). This also gave me the opportunity to reinforce the use of commas instead of points to separate large numbers.

The freer practice was perhaps a little too free: it would have been better to have set one topic, such as population change, and discussed some ideas open class before the students went off to do more research, or to have formed groups and given specific countries to search for information on before writing up the findings individually. The students were able to compose texts using some of the numerical expressions we had learned, but not all were able to produce work of sufficient length due to problems finding specific data.

Conclusion

Numeracy is an essential part of everyday life for ESOL students, whether shopping for food, using public transport, finding a telephone number or calculating bills. Although traditionally overlooked, numeracy plays a significant part in existing ESOL resources and classroom work. By paying greater attention to the things we already do, and embedding numeracy work by teaching mathematical skills as well as the language used to perform them, we can equip our learners with a wider range of literacies.

Bibliography

Adult Numeracy Core Curriculum - DfES (2001)
Enhancing numeracy skills in adult literacy programs: Challenges and new directions - NCAL Connections, Philadelphia, PA: National Center on Adult Literacy. Stoudt, A. (1994, June).
Breaking the Language Barriers - DfEE (2000)
The Leitch Review of Skills - HM Treasury (2004)

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