TITLE:
The Difficulties in Solving Word Mathematical Problems among Fourth-Grade Students in the Al-Dakhiliyah Governorate in the Sultanate of Oman
AUTHORS:
Mohammed Nassir Al Riyami, Said Ali Al Hadhrami
KEYWORDS:
Degree of Difficulty, Mathematical Word Problems
JOURNAL NAME:
Creative Education,
Vol.15 No.8,
August
12,
2024
ABSTRACT: This study aimed to identify the difficulties of solving word mathematical problems among fourth-grade students in the second field in the Al-Dakhiliyah Governorate in the Sultanate of Oman. It also provided proposals for solving the difficulties facing the students in such problems. Descriptive approach as well as a questionnaire was used in this study. The data were collected from a sample of size (107) female teachers. The questionnaire consisted of (24) items, distributed over 4 main sections as follows: difficulties related to internal factors among students, difficulties related to the teachers, difficulties related to the textbooks, and difficulties related to the nature of the word mathematical problems. The study reached a set of results and the most important of which are: there are difficulties related to internal factors among students, and the most prominent of which are “weak level of reading comprehension” as well as “weak ability to apply the four steps of problem solving: understand, plan, solve, verify.” There are difficulties related to the teacher, and most notably is “limitation to modeling the solution” and “lack of training students in using graphical representations for word mathematical problems”. There are also difficulties related to textbooks, and the most prominent of which are: “lack of remedial exercises” and “not taking into account suspense and attraction in presenting word problems”. Finally, there are difficulties related to the nature of the word mathematical problems, and the most prominent of which are: “difficulty in determining what is required in the problem” and “the presence of excess information”.