WORKING WITH MATHEMATICAL PROBLEMS: AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS MISCONCEPTIONS AND ITS IMPACT ON MATHEMATICS LEARNING

The great misconception about mathematics is the notion that mathematics is about formulas, solving word problems, and doing computations. Hence, it is the impetus for this study to explore why so many students havedifficulty learning mathematics. To achieve this goal, this study focuses on why so many students keep making the same errors over a long period of time. Generally, among the errors committed by the students in solving word problems, it was found out that students usually made encoding errors. These errors were the result of carelessness, rushing through a problem or misreading a problem. These students correctly work out the solution, but cannot express this solution in an acceptable written form.Moreover, this study stresses that one of the foremost problems encountered by the students was their inability to understand the language used in mathematics, which is English. For some students, mathematical disability was a result of problems with the language of mathematics. Students had difficulty in understanding mathematical terminologies which normally were not used outside the mathematics lesson. Furthermore, lack of comprehension of the students in algebraic expressions concepts and operations leads to an error in translating mathematical phrase into mathematical symbol. This was due to insufficient understanding of mathematical expressions and poor skills in mathematical translation. The conclusions drawn from this investigation strongly justify the needs for mathematics teachers to give more emphasis on students learning in mathematical concepts. They must also need to be empowered in order to help the learners to be conversant in the mathematical language. The study has demonstrated that mathematical language plays a vital role in learners comprehension of word problems, hence the language that is used in mathematical word problems needs to be taken into cognizance.