Chinese language and students’ mathematics learning: a meta-analysis

Research has revealed the extent and mechanism of the relation between language (dominated by alphabetic systems) and students’ mathematics learning, but when it comes to Chinese language (an orthographic system), nature remains elusive. In this meta-analysis we aim to quantify the size of the relation between Chinese language and mathematics and determine the mechanism under which the correlation works. With a random effect model, a moderate relation (r = 0.36, 95%CI [0.34, 0.38]) between Chinese language and mathematics was identified in 34 studies with 27 unique samples and 58,995 participants. Both dimensions of Chinese language and domains of mathematics were verified as significant moderators. Differences and commonalities of the relation between (Chinese) language and mathematics were discussed compared with existing meta-analyses. The findings suggested that consistent with alphabetic languages such as English, Chinese phonological processing, especially Rapid Automatic Naming (RAN) had the weakest correlation with mathematics, while oral comprehension and comprehensive language produced the strongest relations with mathematics; and Chinese language had the strongest correlation with comprehensive mathematics. Compared with alphabetic languages, Chinese language showed a stronger correlation with calculations; Chinese RAN showed a weaker correlation with mathematics, while Chinese orthographic-related skills produced a superior correlation with mathematics. Research implications were also suggested.