Algebraic word problems: Role of linguistic and structural variables

“…Aiken, 1972; Cocking & Chipman, 1988; De Corte, Verschaffel, & DeWin, 1985; Garcia, 1991; Jerman & Rees, 1972; Kintsch & Greeno, 1985; Larsen, Parker, & Trenholme, 1978; Lepik, 1990; Mestre, 1988; Munro, 1979; Noonan, 1990; Orr, 1987; Rothman & Cohen, 1989; Spanos, Rhodes, Dale, & Crandall, 1988).”

“Students who lack proficiency in the language of the test consistently perform at lower levels, and changes in the language of the test can result in changes in student scores (Aiken, 1971, 1972; Cocking & Chipman, 1988; De Corte, Verschaffel, & De Win, 1985; Jerman & Rees, 1972; Kintsch & Greeno, 1985; Larsen, Parker…”

“Several different types of WPs—e.g., in the underlying mathematical structure or solvability— are often presented intermixed in one study without acknowledging the problem type.”

“Thus, language factors may seriously confound the outcomes of instruction and assessment in content-based areas (Abedi, Lord, & Hofstetter, 1998; Cocking & Chipman, 1988; De Corte, Verschaffel, & DeWin, 1985; Kintsch & Greeno, 1985; Larsen, Parker, & Trenholme, 1978; Lepik, 1990; Mestre, 1988; Munro, 1979; Noonan, 199…”

“For example, Lepik (1990) reported different findings after investigating students’ performance on WPs. Linguistic factors, including the length of a WP statement, were not significant predictors of the proportion of correctly solved WPs but were strong predictors of the WP-solving time.”

“Such nuisance variables may seriously confound the outcome of assessment in content-based areas (Abedi, Lord, & Hofstetter, 1998; Cocking & Chipman, 1988; De Corte, Verschaffel, & DeWin, 1985; Kintsch & Greeno, 1985; Trenholme, Larsen, & Parker, 1978; Lepik, 1990; Mestre, 1988; Munro, 1979; Noonan, 1990; Orr, 1987; Ro…”

“…subtests developed for monolingual English speakers are not constructed to capture the variability within bilingual language development (DeCorte, Verschaffel, & DeWin, 1985; Lepik, 1990; Noonan, 1990), any reported measures of construct validity or reliability will produce limited results.”

“Research findings suggest that students who have limited English proficiency levels perform at higher levels when the language of the test is changed to their first language (Abedi et al., 2004; Lepik, 1990; Noonan, 1990).”

“, Hall, Kibler, Wenger, & Truxaw, 1989; Hinsley, Hayes, & Simon, 1977; Kintsch, 1998; Koedinger & Nathan, 2004; Lane, 1991; Mayer, Larkin, & Kadane, 1984; Nathan, Kintsch, & Young, 1992; Reusser, 1989; Tirre & Pena, 1993) as well as the item features influencing their difficulty (e.g., Enright, Morley, & Sheehan, 2002…”

“For example, researchers have hypothesized that the linguistic complexity (LC) of items provides a potential source of differential functioning in math items for English language learner students as compared with students for whom English is the first language (e.g., Abedi, 2002; Abedi et al., 2005; Abedi, Lord, & Plu…”

“…the same question is revised and reformulated in many versions and all the different forms of the task are administered to the same group of students (e.g. Lepik, 1990; Cummins, Kintsch, Reusser, & Weimer, 1988; De Corte, Verschaffel, & De Win, 1985; Thevenot, Devidal, Barrouillet, & Fayol, 2007).”

“It is often measured as the average number of words per sentence (Glazer, 1974; Haag, Heppt, Roppelt, & Stanat, 2014), but sometimes also as letters or literals per sentence (Lepik, 1990) or the number of units (not only words but also abbreviations and formulae) per sentence (Kulm, 1971).”

“…in school (Mikk, 2000, p.120), text interest level (Kukemelk & Mikk, 1993), reading time (Kukemelk, 1993), verbal problem solving correctness (Lepik, 1990), etc. Changing the *Address correspondence to: Prof. Dr. Jaan Mikk, Dept. of Education, Tartu University, 18 UÈ likooli Street, 50090…”

“There are some indications from prior research in physics and from algebraic word problems that motivation to solve a problem can be affected by the choice of real-world situations (Bernacki & Walkington, 2018; Lepik, 1990).”

“Madis Lepik did his doctoral work on aspects of mathematics textbooks (Lepik, 1990, 1993) and he has already carried out studies on textbooks and published a number of papers (one of them together with Tiiu Kaljas) (Lepik & Kaljas, 2010).”

“Linguistic properties included such variables as the number of words in the problem or the mean sentence length (Lepik, 1990).”

“…linguistic features were found to be associated with the item difficulty (e.g., Drum et al. 1981; Embretson and Wetzel 1987; Jerman and Mirman 1973; Lepik 1990) and served as an additional piece of information to explain and inform the IRT model parameters (e.g., Embretson and Wetzel 1987; Paap et…”

“Meanwhile, solving does not become easier due to details that help imagine the relevant real-life situation better but do not clarify the problem structure [Davis-Dorsey, Ross, Morrison, 1991; Lepik, 1990; Vicente, Orrantia, Verschaffel, 2007].”