“Mathematics learning is often connected with students’ attitudes toward mathematics, or in more extreme cases, their mathematics anxiety” (Pyzdrowski & Sun, 2009, p. 38). Blazer (2011) defines math anxiety as a state of mind undermining the ability of the students to think critically in mathematics. Furthermore, he relates some physical symptoms accompanying math anxiety: pulse increase, headache, and stomachache (Blazer, 2011). With all those symptoms, he explains that the student’s ability to reason is seriously compromised. To help the math-anxious students, Pyzdrowski and Sun suggest using technology.
Pyzdrowski and Sun try to determine how technology can help reduce math anxiety. They complain that “little has been done in the area of long-term coping strategies” (Pyzdrowski & Sun, 2009, p. 38). The authors
…show more content…
Essentially, she was trying to understand how to utilize math software to support the ESOL students. She was focused on a specific technology, HELP Math, which is designed exclusively for K-12 ESOL students, according to her. Freeman (2011) explained that “Help Math is a comprehensive, supplemental digital mathematics intervention which embeds sheltered instruction and other research-based strategies directly into a mathematics curriculum” (p. 50). She mentioned that this program provides the basic math skill and grade-level math content to the students while simultaneously expanding the ESOL students ‘academic vocabulary, improving their English proficiency. She concluded that HELP Math does improve ESOL students’ math skills. Many math software products pretend to support ESOL students. There is a lack of evidence of those products’ efficiency in the case of ninth grade ESOL students. This paper aims to answer the following question: Is there a relationship between the use of tutoring math software and the math success rate for the ninth grade ESOL