The speaker of this article is reporter Jan Hoffman for The New York Times. While reading this article it shows that Hoffman was writing to be informative and explanatory. Math anxiety is problem that effects many people, but it does not seem to bother this reporter. She has no bias while writing this, she wanted to inform the readers of the issue. Since this problem does not seem to affect the reporter, she was apparently given this topic for work. Hoffman used many quotes and statics in this article to explain the difficulties the parents face while helping a child with math anxiety. She was very near and dear to this situation which could mean the reporter has children at home that she works with personally. Hoffman wanted to be informative and make parents aware of the issue. The occasion of this article is an observation. This article was written to inform parents that struggle with math that helping their child with math might have a negative effect on their child. Hoffman was influenced by decreasing test scores, and children not doing as well in school. People have been noticing that more students are struggling in school, and especially in math. This is could a factor why math is one of the hard subjects in school, and that why she …show more content…
Hoffman wrote this article to influence parent’s decisions on how to help their children. She did not write this article to discourage parents that do not particularly like math, she wrote it give those parents advice on how to help their child. In this article she gives those parents advice on how they can work through their own math anxiety. This article could also be used for educators. Educator have students come from many backgrounds, and learning that math anxiety is passed from parent to student very easily, they could redo some of their learning plans. This article audience has a very wide variety but parents with math anxiety is targeted