Mathematical Word Problems Translation And Students’ Ability In Secondary Schools In Rivers State, Nigeria

Gladys Ibibo CHARLES-OGAN

Abstract


This study investigated the relationship between Mathematical word problems translation and students’ ability in secondary schools in Rivers State, Nigeria. Three objectives, three research questions and three null hypotheses guided the study. A two-stage simple random sampling technique was employed to select 685 students from ten co-educational public secondary schools from the population of the study. Word Problem Translation Achievement Test (WPTAT) and Word Problem Solution Achievement Test (WPSAT) were used to collect data. The stability of WPTAT (r=.79) and WPSAT(r=.72) was established using the test-retest method. The Pearson Product-Moment Correlation statistic was used to analyse the data at an alpha level of .05. The result showed that there is a strong positive correlation between students’ ability to translate the text of a word problem to a mathematical sentence and the actual problem solution. The result also showed a significant relationship between students’ ability to translate the text of a word problem to mathematical sentence and the actual problem solution (F1, 683=4629, p< .05). It was therefore recommended that mathematics teachers during classroom teaching should spotlight the translation proper as a necessary step and explicitly teach the skills of translation because an erroneous translation leads to a misconception of the problem and ultimately a failure in solving the word problem

Keywords


Mathematics, Word Problem, Relational Terms, Translation, Actual Solution.

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.52155/ijpsat.v50.2.7245

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