The relative influence of different factors in children's word problem difficulties has not been established. Nevertheless, it is persistently assumed that poor reading contributes substantially to these difficulties. The written solutions of 35 sixth-graders to the word problem portion of the Metropolitan Achievement Test were assigned to nine disjoint groups. Poor reading could not have been a factor in the 52% of the problems that were incorrectly solved solely because of computational and clerical mistakes. Reading may or may not have been a factor in the remaining 48% of the incorrectly solved problems, but computational difficulties were clearly the major deterrent to success.
The ability of nine- and thirteen-year-olds to solve word problems has declined significantly since the First National Assessment of Educational Progress in 1972–73 (Carpenter et al. 1980). This drop is unfortunate, because learning to solve word problems prepares students to use mathematics in the real world. Teaching children to think logically about word problems is at the core of the professional responsibility of mathematics educators.
Division is the last of the four fundamental operations learned and is often perceived by teachers and students alike as the most difficult. It is all too common to discover a sixth grader who has difficulty explaining what 15 -5 = __ means. Frequently all the student can say is that 3 must be the answer because 5 times 3 is 15. This good explanation does not go far enough. A student whose understanding of the operation is limited to this approach will have trouble recognizing situations in which division occurs, whether in real life or in problems in mathematics and science. In order to better prepare students to use division in the variety of situations for which it is appropriate, teachers can choose to familiarize them yvith the several models which give meaning to the operation.
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