Abstract

Korea and China have maintained close relationships since the ancient times along with Japan, which also shares the common Chinese culture. The three major players in Northeast Asia have been recognizing their increasing importance in politics, economy, society, and culture. Considering those relationships among the three countries, it's necessary to compare and investigate their mathematics terminology. The purpose of this study is to investigate the similarities and differences between the terminology of school mathematics in Korean, Chinese and Japanese. The mathematics terms included in the junior high school of Korea were selected, and the corresponding terms in Chinese and Japanese were identified. Among 133 Korean terms, 72 were shared by three countries, 9 Korean terms were common with China, and the remaining 52 Korean terms were the same as Japanese terms. Korea had more common terms with Japan than China, which can be explained by the influences of the Japanese education during its rule of Korea in the past. The survey with 14 terms which show the discrepancy among 3 countries were conducted for in-service teachers and pre-service teachers. According to the result of the survey, preferred mathematics terms are different from one group to the other, yet the Korean mathematics terms were more preferred in general. However some terms in Chinese and Japanese were favored in certain degree. This result may provide meaningful implications to revise the school mathematics terms in the future.

Keywords

• mathematics terms in Korean;
• Chinese;
• and Japanese;
• international comparison of mathematics terms

• 한국;
• 중국;
• 일본의 수학 용어;
• 수학 용어 국제 비교;