Vocabulary in learning processes towards conceptual understanding of equivalent fractions—specifying students’ language demands on the basis of lexical trace analyses

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Although the teaching of vocabulary in mathematics lessons is requested in content- and language-integrated lesson designs, the clarification of the specific lexical language demands is still an open question for many mathematical topics. In a content- and language-integrated lesson design towards understanding the concept of equivalent fractions, the vocabulary (words and phrases) used by 17 students has been analyzed with qualitative means of data analysis. The qualitative in-depth analyses underline the importance of meaning-related vocabulary for making structural relations between the fractions in view explicit. Quantitative analyses of inventoried vocabulary for the four categories “self-initiated by students,” “triggered by teaching material,” “triggered by teacher,” or “triggered by peers” show the relations of collective and autonomous vocabularies from which the students retrieve their lexical means in oral and written language production.</jats:p>