The effect of rewording and dyadic interaction on realistic reasoning in solving word problems

摘要

In this study we investigated the effect of the request to reword the text of problematic word problems on the occurrence of realistic answers. We proposed the activity of rewording four word problems to fifth-grade pupils either working individually or in dyads. We found that for one of the problems the rewording in dyads produced a strong increase in pupils' realistic answers, for another one a small increase, and no increase at all for the other two. We also analysed pupils' reworded texts in order to characterize the kind of information added. For all four problems the rewording in dyads produced richer texts in comparison to the individual rewording. Moreover, for the problems where an increase in realistic answers was observed, two particular kinds of information, named descriptive and action information, were added by dyads who answered realistically.