A Correlational Study On Grade Six Students' Mathematical Image

In the mathematics teaching, mathematical image plays an important role in promoting students' mathematical thinking, their ability to find and solve problems, and their efficiency to learn mathematics. Junior middle school period is the most important period to develop students' mathematical image. Therefore, it is significant to research on Grade 6 students' mathematical image.Based on the review of the relevant literature and the author's own teaching experiences, this study investigated the relationship between students' mathematical image level to the four factors, which are comprehension ability of language information, comprehension ability of mathematical concept, conversion ability of mathematical language and attention ability by surveying 166 Grade 6 students from an ordinary middle school in Shanghai. The results show that there are statistical significant and practically strong relationships between students' mathematical image level to the four above mentioned factors. There are generally consistent result between girls and boys in terms of the relationships investigated.This study proposes four teaching suggestions to develop students' mathematical image level based on the results, which are (1) constructing the relationship between language to its image, (2) making use of graphical representations, (3)using "mathematical memory image method" together with mathematical language, and (4) attracting students' attention by utilizing different teaching means. This paper further describes an initial teaching practice which explores a kind of teaching approach to develop students' mathematical image by considering the above four factors.