Abstract Multiple-meaning words may pose acute challenges to young learners, especially those who speak a home language other than English. The goal of this study was to investigate Emergent Bilinguals’ (EBs) knowledge about words that convey both specific mathematical meanings as well as everyday meanings (e.g., the volume of a triangular prism and the volume of an Iphone). We selected 12 multiple-meaning words for their importance in learning mathematical concepts and procedures. Two studies were conducted sequentially with populations representing distinct profiles of EB learners in US schools: 28 middle schoolers from several cultural and linguistic backgrounds in Study 1 and 32 Spanish-English bilingual fourth graders in Study 2. Given scholarship on challenges associated with academic language, we hypothesized that everyday meanings would be more familiar than mathematical meanings for both populations of EB learners. However, this hypothesis did not play out in either context. We found no significant differences between knowledge of everyday and mathematical meanings for Spanish-English EBs, though there were notable differences by target word. More surprisingly, the population of EBs from multiple language backgrounds demonstrated a greater understanding of mathematical senses of the target words. We examine how knowledge of multiple-meaning words relates to language and literacy skills as well as contextual factors. This study demonstrates the importance of taking into consideration the heterogeneity of the EB population for supporting language and mathematics development of multilingual students.

中文翻译：

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重点是什么？新兴双语者对承载日常和学科特定数学意义的多义词的理解

摘要 多义词可能会给年轻学习者带来严峻的挑战，尤其是那些说英语以外的母语的学习者。本研究的目的是调查新兴双语者 (EB) 对表达特定数学含义和日常含义（例如，三棱柱的体积和 Iphone 的体积）的单词的知识。我们选择了 12 个具有多重含义的词，因为它们在学习数学概念和过程中很重要。对代表美国学校 EB 学习者不同特征的人群依次进行了两项研究：研究 1 中的 28 名来自不同文化和语言背景的中学生和研究 2 中的 32 名西班牙-英语双语四年级学生。 鉴于与学术语言相关的挑战的奖学金，我们假设对于这两个 EB 学习者群体来说，日常含义比数学含义更熟悉。然而，这个假设在这两种情况下都没有出现。我们发现西班牙语-英语 EB 的日常知识和数学意义之间没有显着差异，尽管目标词存在显着差异。更令人惊讶的是，来自多种语言背景的 EB 群体表现出对目标词的数学意义有更好的理解。我们研究了多义词的知识与语言和读写技能以及语境因素之间的关系。本研究证明了考虑 EB 人群的异质性对于支持多语种学生的语言和数学发展的重要性。