CHALLENGES OF MATHEMATICS LANGUAGE ON PUPILS’ PERFORMANCE IN MATHEMATICS AT THE PRIMARY SCHOOL LEVEL IN DELTA STATE, NIGERIA

This paper investigated the challenges of Mathematics language on pupils’ performance in mathematics at the primary school. This study adopted the survey design. The population of the study consisted of all the 1,165 public primary school in Delta State. The simple random technique was used to select twelve (12) public primary schools from Ughelli North and Warri South Local Government Area with a sample size of Two hundred (200) pupils. The researchers developed Questionnaires on Mathematics Objective Tests (QMOT) which consists of two (2) section: Section A sought for demographic on sex and locations of the pupils. While section B was the Questionnaire on Mathematics Objective Tests (QMOT) of ten (10) items as instrument of data collection. The two (2) research questions and hypotheses formulated were answered and tested using the mean and t-test at 5% level of significance. The major findings of this research is that pupils in urban and rural area in public primary schools have enormous difficulties in understanding Mathematics problems due to the Mathematics language that was used. And this led to a recommendation that Mathematics educators should develop a handbook on primary Mathematics language.