A Research On Vocational Colleges Students' Ability Of Solving Practical Math Problems Related To Function

Nowadays more and more attention is laid on cultivating students' ability of solving practical math problems with their acquired knowledge, which has been a clear requirement of the reform on new math course and which has been strengthened in the evaluation of math teaching. This thesis focuses on how to reinforce the application ability of math teaching in vocational colleges by examining the students' ability of using function knowledge in solving practical problems. It is hoped that through this study some reasonable suggestions may be provided to the overall design of math course for vocational colleges, the teaching and learning of function, as well as some major problems existing in math teaching on function even in the math teaching field as a whole.This study puts emphasis on the students' ability of solving function problems in approach of testing and interviewing in order to find out the major errors and causes. It is found that around 20% of the students majoring in two fields have difficulty in solving function problems and they cannot solve the questions with their acquired knowledge and skills. The students' problems lie in that: 1) They cannot clearly comprehend the meaning of the questions, the reasons of which are their poor comprehension of the requirements, their lack of common knowledge and their poor command of graphic information. 2) They have difficulty in interpreting and composing formulas of function, the reasons for which are their poor comprehension of the requirements and their incapability in distinguishing the relation and changing of variables involved in the formulas, hence failing to establish models for function. 3) They are weak in manipulating the models of function, the reasons for which are their shallow understanding of the formulas, their inflexibility of using the features of function, their lack of comprehensive analysis of the conditions and the affect of the problem on the range of variables and their lack of necessary skills in calculating. 4) They ignore proof-reading and reviewing the practical questions, the major reasons for which are that the students haven't formed the habit of re-examining their production and are not aware of the importance of retrospection. Based on the findings, this study gives reflection on future teaching of function in vocational colleges and provides some concrete strategies and methods in promoting students' ability of solving practical questions with their knowledge of function. When teaching function, we should pay attention to both the training on comprehension of the requirements and the common knowledge involved in the questions so as to increase the students' confidence in solving practical problems. Besides, ample examples should be adopted to cultivate students' skills and habit of transferring practical questions to math problems and verifying their answers in the practical situation.