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Symbolization is the ability to translate a real world situation into the language of algebra. We believe that symbolization is the single most important skill students learn in high school algebra. We present research on what makes this skill difficult and report the discovery of a “hidden” skill in symbolization. Contrary to past research that has emphasized that symbolization is difficult due to both comprehension difficulties and the abstract nature of variables, we found that symbolization is difficult because it is the articulation in the “foreign” language of “algebra”. We also present Ms. Lindquist, an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) designed to carry on a tutorial dialog about symbolization. Ms. Lindquist has a separate tutorial model encoding pedagogical content knowledge in the form of different tutorial strategies, which were partially developed by observing an experienced human tutor. We discuss aspects of this …