[Blindmath] Language (was Spatial Abilities)

[sabra1023]

I was classified as having spatial disorientation, and I never had problems with the actual language. I knew the difference between the things you were talking about and I knew what I was supposed to do to a certain extent, but physically doing it didn't work out. For instance, I knew I was supposed to walk in a straight line, but I couldn't. For me, it was more about missing out on experiences rather than language.

> On Jun 7, 2014, at 3:17 PM, Susan Jolly via Blindmath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> I think many students have trouble when the same word has both a common and a technical meaning.  When we say in English that a person had so much to drink that they couldn't walk a straight line we don't mean "straight line" in the mathematical sense. The opposite can also happen.  I remember I used to get confused when a math teacher referred to a curved line as simply a line when I had thought the word line always meant "straight line."
> 
> A non-math example is the useage of the pair of words "melt" and "dissolve." These are often treated as synonyms in ordinary speech but in a science course "melt" refers to the process happening when a single material changes from solid to liquid because of the application of heat (or pressure) and "dissolve" refers to the process happening when a solid, such as table salt, becomes intimately mixed with a different material, such as water, which is a liquid.
> 
> SusanJ 
> 
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