Overcoming Obstacles to Understanding and Solving Word Problems in Mathematics

Abstract

ABSTRACT The trouble students have with solving word problems often comes from the difficulty in understanding the problem structure embedded in the problem text. This research was conducted to study the interactive effects of learner and instructional variables on understanding and solving word problems among Filipino‐English bilingual grade school students in the Philippines. The results showed better understanding and solution performance (1) when problems were written in the students’ first language, (2) when the problems were re‐worded to state more explicitly the relationship among the known and unknown quantities, (3) for students in higher levels of schooling and (4) for students with higher levels of academic achievement. The effects of re‐wording were mediated by the effects of the language; and the effects of language also varied between the highand low‐achievement students. In most cases where the students’ performance improved, the improvement seems to be due to better comprehension of the text (or fewer basic comprehension errors); except with the improvement due to re‐wording, which seems to be due to fewer misinterpretation errors. The results of the study provide further support for earlier findings, but also extend and modify the theoretical ramifications of the earlier findings and point to some important implications for educational practice.