Formulating textual tasks based on mathematical expressions in the fourth grade of primary school

Abstract

The paper deals with the characteristics of students’ products of independent writing in mathematics instruction. The importance of the research stems from a relatively low achievement of primary school students in Serbia on international tests of trends of students’ achievement in mathematics and sciences, as well as from the prominent need, proven both empirically and theoretically, to devote attention to writing not solely in language instruction, considering a low level of basic and functional literacy of students. The aim of the research was to study the characteristics of students’ products in which they translated mathematical expressions into textual form. The criteria for analysing students’ products were the following: mathematical accuracy, reality of the context, variety and originality of topics, dominant types of text structuring and normative, lexical and syntactic characteristics. The sample included 198 fourth-grade primary school students. Standard quantitative and qualitative methodological procedures were used. The findings indicate that the students have not been sufficiently trained to translate mathematical expressions into the form of textual tasks. Although they recognised and complied with the rules of the genre and functional style, students did not pay attention to the reality of the context and quantities. They also neglected other aspects that are not directly related to mathematics instruction: innovativeness in selecting the topics of textual tasks, orthographic and grammatical accuracy of the text/textual task, choice of vocabulary and syntactic complexity of sentences. The results also suggest that it is necessary to devote more attention to open-ended problems and the quality of linguistic expression in the instruction of all school subjects.