Teaching students to write and read mathematics

Students typically come to university without knowing how to write mathematics. Rather than treat it as a problem that individual members of staff have to deal with by themselves, we created half a module designed to explicitly teach students how they are expected to express mathematical concepts, ideas and proofs. By introducing this topic right at the start of students’ university experience, we succeeded in created an improvement that lasted into students’ second year. We also discovered along the way that students don’t know how to read mathematics, and so we expanded our remit into ‘study skills’, rather than focusing purely on writing well.