I Beg Your Pardon, Sir?

I had sworn to myself many years ago that I'll never make the same mistake again, yet, with so much regret, I still do. I guess it's a hard habit to break.

Although just occasionally nowadays, I still read numbers in decimal form improperly.

For example, I still read 0.34 as "point thirty-four" instead of "thirty-four hundredths." And I admit it is easier to read 0.2345 as "point two, three, four, five" than to read the number as "two thousand, three hundred forty-five ten-thousandths." The longer the decimal, the easier it is to read it improperly.  

This practice seems harmless at first glance but unfortunately it's not! 

We teachers who have the habit of reading decimals improperly are not helping our students mathematically by not helping them master their vocabulary.

As we all know, students, who know very well that 0.34 is thirty-four hundredths, have better facility at being able to express the number as 34/100, its fractional equivalent which they could easily simplify into 17/50.

This failure in number sense is prevalent even with native high school kids. Add that to the fact that the number of non-native English speakers keeps on increasing only makes it even more urgent to change this practice. These immigrants have lots of potential and they need our unwavering commitment in helping them learn the English language so that they can already promptly engage in learning with academic rigor and achieve mastery.

I now know better, but I wouldn't be able to say I've done the right thing until I've completely stopped doing this unfortunate teaching malpractice myself.

Reading decimals improperly is not a good practice at all. Not to stop doing it is downright irresponsible.