Language & Word Problems

Language also creates a lot of difficulty in understanding word problems. Before we start the study of word problems, it is good to understand the issues involved.

Issues with the Math Textbook

The major culprit is the textbook.

1. The word problems in the textbooks are many times written from a mathematician's perspective and not that of a primary school student. They use precise, but confusing language, which cannot be easily understood by children.

   1. Consider this problem. "Ramu has a collection of 16 tokens of red & blue colours. He had 3 times as many blue tokens as red tokens. How many blue tokens did he have?". The correct formulation is 3R=B. But a student who has weaker English skills, may as well interpret the sentence as 3B = R!

      1. For a primary school student the problem could have been worded more simply, as - "Ramu has a collection of 16 red & blue tokens. The number of blue tokens are 3 times that of red tokens."

   2. Another example is : "If 27 marbles are shared between 2 friends such that one of them gets 3 mote than the other, how many do each get?"

      1. This could be reworded as: "27 marbles are shared between 2 friends. After the sharing, one of them gets 3 more than the other. How many do each get?"

2. Many of these problems are also "hand-me-downs" copy-pasted from old textbooks. Many of the life situations may be difficult for children to understand in today's circumstances.

3. Traditionally math education in India has focused mainly on calculations & algorithms. The current emphasis of making math easy to understand may not be reflected in the way these problems are written.

Many of these issues can be solved if teachers learn to write word problems and train the students as well.

At the primary school, the emphasis should be on students interpreting and constructing their own word problems.