¿Comprenden los alumnos los enunciados de los problemas?

Abstract

Probably the first difficulty that a student has when he faces a math problem is the comprehension of the language of the problem. Sometimes the student does not understand the problem because he simply does not know the meaning of some words or does not understand the sentences, but most of the times the student does not understand it because he is unable to understand what exactly the question is. With the intention of understanding better this situation, we have developed a work with a group of students of the third course of ESO (Spanish Compulsory Secondary Education) involving the resolution of five math problems in two different ways: in the first one we propose the students to precise what is asked in each exercise; in the second one we propose the same exercise but the students are given four solutions in order to choose the correct one.