" (Grauberg p. 3) Children who seem to have the most problems with symbolic understanding are the ones that are known as being semantic or pragmatic. These types of children are able to use the symbols that are numbers and letters. However, they can only use them as they learned them causing the children to be unable to see the symbols as constructs which, only stand for a meaning. "In general, such children will have difficulty in applying acquired number skills to new situations". (Grauberg p.4) .
Some children with very large problems in language development seem to just give up on learning mathematical skills at a very early age. Here the problem of teacher interaction becomes a problem because if the teachers do not spend a lot of time helping and introducing the concepts of symbols to these students at very young ages the students will give up at fail at math later in the future. These children tend to become distracted very easily by their surroundings.
Another problem found in the symbolic understanding is that the children may know a counting system very different to the one that they are learning at their present school. The confusion of the two number systems can be extremely large. " children will have difficulty in accommodating their own, more global and non-verbal working symbol system- (Grauberg p.6).
There are ways to help these children with learning mathematics. First, one must begin by concentrating on the cardinal aspect to numbers. Here the relationship between linguistic form and the content in small and simple. Some suggest working with terms that are in relation to numbers and amounts such as a little or a few. "Before precisely specified quantities like "three" or "four" are introduced, it may be useful to work with large nonspecific quantities." (Grauberg p.9) The next step is to have the child associate specific amounts to the numbers such as five apples or seven shirts.