博文
[转载]为什么中国人的数学好
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Language as we all know is a very important component of culture and does language make a difference in terms of learning mathematics? Research has shown that some languages are better for learning math. There are some very trivial things like the number system taking the number 11 for example in English we have a unique word for it. But in Chinese, it is spoken as 10 and 1. It's the same in Arabic, Japanese, Korean, and Turkish.
This digit system is very very simple in Chinese which makes arithmetic very easy to learn. The other thing about the Chinese spoken language is that it's monosyllabic. This makes committing to memory easier. They don't call the tables, they call it a song. They also have a nine-factor song in Chinese which has tones that mean people remember things by sound. But once you've learned it, it's just like a song.
The reason China is so good at math is its language. Take a look at the following numbers.
8 7 4 3 5 6 9Say them out loud. Spend twenty seconds memorizing these numbers. Now, say them back. You had about a fifty-fifty chance of saying that correctly. If you're Chinese, however, you are practically guaranteed to get it right every single time. Malcolm Gladwell explains it quite
succinctly, in Outliers: ".As human beings, we store digits in a memory loop that runs for about two seconds. We most easily memorize whatever we can say or read within that two-second span. And Chinese speakers get that list of numbers - [8, 7, 4, 3, 5, 6, 9] - right almost every time because, unlike English, their language allows them to fit all those seven numbers into two seconds.
Chinese number words are remarkably brief. Most of them can be uttered in less than one-quarter of a second (for instance, 4 is "si" and 7 is "qi"). Their English equivalents - "four," "seven" - are longer: pronouncing them takes about one-third of a second." Basically, the Chinese language makes it easier to memorize strings of numbers.
And that's not all. The Chinese system of double-digit numbers is also a lot more efficient and intuitive. For example, in English, we say "eleven". In Chinese, it's "ten-one". In English, we say, "twenty-two". In Chinese, it's "two-tens two". This means the average Chinese-speaking four-year-old can count to forty, while the average English-speaking four years old can only count to fifteen. It takes a full year for those four-year-old English-speaking children to be able to learn to count to forty.
And wait! There's more! That same system of saying the place systems out loud helps in basic arithmetic. For example, if a child is asked on a test, "what's twenty-three plus forty-two", they have to convert the letters to numbers and add. In Chinese, however, it's "what's two tens three plus four tens two", meaning the equation is already printed, with no conversion to numbers necessary.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-do-asian-countries-excel-mathematics-soham-sunthankar/
Soham Sunthankarhttps://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-3004473-1512755.html
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