Is it maths, or is it English? Helping children who learn maths in a second language
Many South African children have solid number sense — but lose marks because the questions are asked in an unfamiliar language.
Your child comes home with a maths test marked low, and the mistakes don't quite make sense. They clearly know how to add and subtract — you've watched them do it at the dinner table — yet a simple word problem trips them up completely. Before you assume it's a maths problem, it's worth asking a different question: is this actually about maths, or is it about English?
For millions of South African children, the language of maths instruction at school isn't the language spoken at home. A child who thinks and dreams in isiZulu, Sesotho, Afrikaans, or Xitsonga may be doing perfectly sound mathematical reasoning in their head, only to lose marks because the question was phrased in unfamiliar English, or because they couldn't find the words to explain their working. This is one of the most under-recognised causes of "maths difficulty" in South African classrooms — and it's fixable once you know what you're looking at.
How to tell if it's language, not maths
The two problems can look almost identical on a test paper, but the patterns underneath are different.
- Calculation questions are fine, word problems aren't. Your child consistently gets sums right but loses marks on word problems and multi-step instructions.
- Reading it aloud unlocks the answer. They can solve a question once you read it out and explain it in your home language, but not when reading it alone.
- Spoken reasoning outpaces written answers. Their verbal explanation is confident, but written answers are short, muddled, or missing steps.
- They ask about words, not methods. "What does this word mean?" comes up more often than "How do I solve this?"
- Mistakes cluster around vocabulary. Errors gather around specific terms — "difference," "product," "increase," "share equally" — rather than a particular type of calculation.
If several of these sound familiar, the core maths ability is probably intact. What's missing is the vocabulary and comprehension scaffolding needed to access it under exam conditions.
Why this is especially common in South Africa
South Africa has eleven official languages, and most children are taught mathematics in English or Afrikaans from the Intermediate Phase onward — often a language they're still building fluency in. Even confident English speakers struggle with subject-specific "maths English": terms like "sum," "difference," "product," and "at least" carry precise meanings in a maths context that differ from everyday usage.
This gets harder as children move up the grades. Foundation Phase maths (Grades 1–3) tends to be visual and numerical, but by Grade 4 and beyond, word problems, instructions, and multi-step reasoning questions dominate — exactly where language proficiency becomes a bottleneck. A child who coped fine in Grade 3 can suddenly appear to be "falling behind in maths" in Grade 4 or 5, when what's actually changed is the density of English text they need to decode.
The hardest part — the actual mathematical thinking — usually isn't the problem at all.
What actually helps
The good news is that this is one of the more solvable challenges in a child's maths journey, because the underlying number sense is usually already there.
- Read questions aloud together at home, in whichever language builds understanding fastest, then translate the key maths terms so your child connects the concept to the English word.
- Build a simple maths vocabulary list for words that show up again and again — "total," "remainder," "each," "altogether" — and revisit it regularly rather than only before tests.
- Let your child explain their reasoning out loud first. Verbal explanation in a comfortable language, followed by translation into a written English answer, builds the bridge gradually.
- Practise with low-pressure repetition. The more familiar the phrasing of maths questions becomes, the less effort goes into decoding language and the more goes into the actual maths.
This is exactly where consistent, varied practice matters. The more word problems and instructions a child sees, the more the English phrasing of maths becomes second nature — separate from whether they understand the underlying concept. Equals2 gives South African students CAPS-aligned practice questions across Grades 1–12, and because it tracks performance and flags weak areas automatically, it can help you and your child spot whether repeated mistakes are clustering around specific topics — or specific types of wording.
Don't let language mask real progress
It's easy for a language barrier to quietly convince a child — and sometimes a parent — that they're "just not good at maths." That belief can do more long-term damage than the original gap in vocabulary ever would. If your child's maths performance doesn't match what you see them do verbally or informally at home, it's worth pausing before reaching for more maths drilling and instead building their comfort with the language maths is taught in.
With the right combination of vocabulary support and steady, targeted practice, most children close this gap quickly — because the hardest part, the actual mathematical thinking, was never the problem to begin with.