| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺中教育大學 === 教育學系課程與教學碩士班 === 102 === This study aimed at improving second-graders’ ability of comprehension on addition-subtraction word problems of whole numbers. Students’s performance and difficulties on word-problem comprehension were first gathered. An action research approach was employed to help students. The researcher guided the students step by step to explore the semantics structures and the relationship involved in the problem through a series of instructional activies.
The researcher formulated three stages of teaching programs, namely, semantics clarification, relationship clarification, and information integration. The teaching programs based on 20 students in the researcher’s class. Twenty-two teaching sections were designed and conducted by the researcher.
In the process of action research, classroom instruction was tape-recorded and analyzed. Students’ work sheets and researcher’s reflective journals were also collected and analyzed. Based on the data analyses, the main findings of this study are as follows:
1. Juxtaposition of word problems with similar vocabulary, similar surface structure, and inverse relationship can highlight the differences and help students distinguish the differences among different problems.
2. Transformion of mathematical concepts using students’ familiar contexts and expreiences helps students link the situational information to mathematical concepts.
3. Peer interactions, provision of examples, and the use of pictoral representation help students to clarify semantics and relationships of the word problems.
4. At the initial stage of problem comprehension, studeuts need to be guided in small steps, by clear direction, and by hand-on operations.
5. Transforming word problems by referring students themselves in the problem contexts help students to be aware of the relative structure of the word problems.
6. Marks or symbols are helpfur tools to help students focus on important messages in the word problems.
7. Routine problems allows students to learn the basic analytical strategies for exploring the problem description, semantic structure and the relationship of elements in the problem . Non-routine problems enhances students’ ability in applying problem-analysis strategy acquired in routine problems.
8. Some of the students encounter difficulties in transforming a word problem to its pictoral representation.
Based on the findings, the researcher provided recommendations for mathematics instruction of word problems. Recommendations for future research are also provided.
|
|---|
