Wednesday 11 July, 2007

Fear of solving word problems

Fear of solving word problems.
There is a fear of solving a word problem in mathematics among the students .About 80% of the students try to avoid it during the examination. Once I had a survey in my class and I asked the students to solve two word problems from the chapter mensuration in class X.
30% students do not even read the problems.
35% do not understand what is being asked in the question?
15% tried to form correct equations but failed.
20% attempted the questions correctly.

There is no way…to skip word problems. But yes we can make solving word problems interesting for students. It is a challenge for a teacher to add a creative element to a dullest and boring work. The first effort made by a teacher could be to inculcate in students an attitude of doing/learning all kinds of problems which are essential for them. The second and the most important aspect is visualizing a problem. If the students visualize a concept, it helps them to learn/grasp the concept quickly. We can use the resources available on the web for making them visualise the concept.

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