Perhaps the most explicit manifesta

Perhaps the most explicit manifestation of unitary language in mathematics class- rooms is the stipulation of an official language of schooling. In the classe d’accueil, for example, French is the language of teaching and learning. The curriculum, classroom texts, classwork and the teacher are almost always presented exclusively in French. The expectation is that students will become more proficient in the class- room language over time. In practice, Spanish, for example, is heard, sometimes directly in conversations between students, sometimes indirectly in the accents or interpretations of French words. On one occasion, I observed a student ask if he could explain in Spanish how he knew a shape was convex; he was asked to try in French. There is an inevitable tension, then, between the languages that students use in or out of the classroom and the requirements to use a particular language to talk about mathematics.