No Problems
with Word Problems
by Dr. Moti Levi
LearningByYourself.com
Word Problems are the most dreaded type
of problems in math. Even good students
may fear the more difficult ones. But word
problems can be easy. In fact, they can be
extremely easy to solve and can be solved
in a few minutes (really!).
About the Author:
By Dr. Moti Levi
LearningByYourself.com
So why are Word problems difficult? Because of 5
mathematics. Translation is a difficult task
aspects involved:
as it requires knowledge of both languages
1. Knowledge: students must first have the
“technical” knowledge of the subject matter
the problem is centered on. If they don’t have
it, nothing can be done. We can’t “short cut”
our way--we gotta know what we gotta know.
2. Reading Comprehension: the way they
teach to solve word problems requires a high
degree of reading comprehension capability
because they ask students to read the whole
problem, understand everything, know what
the problem is, what the facts are, and how
they relate to each other. Quite a difficult task,
I would say.
3. Translation: After you read, and before you
can “solve”, you need to translate the text to
and the ability to map one way of saying
things to another way (in the second
language). So we’ll simplify the translation.
We’ll do it by translating words and not
sentences, and by learning the required set of
words and their translation (to math). Luckily,
it’s a small set.
4. Problem solving strategy: This is the least
understood, and the least taught (if at all). It
is also the most critical one, because even if
you have mastered steps 1 and 2, you can get
stuck without a good strategy. Strategy is an
overall approach that applies to most, if not
all, problems.