The Investigation Of The Students’ Understanding Of Trigonometric Functions In Urban Weak High Schools

Trigonometric functions as a kind of basic elementary functions, is a important part ofknowledge in high school. And the scores of trigonometric functions in every year of collegeentrance examination is about17. And trigonometric functions in other subjects is also usedvery wide, there will be further study about it in higher education. Therefore, it is veryimportant to study trigonometric functions for high school students.However, when I worked as a math teacher in No.17High School in Changchun, I foundout that many students had a lot of trouble with the study of trigonometric concept.Accordingly, I made an investigation about the understanding of trigonometric concepts of thehigh school students in the urban area of Changchun. According to the test through the threegrades of280students of two weak high schools in Changchun, I knew what kind of mistakesthe students made in the understanding of trigonometric concepts, and the differences in threegrades and the differences between boys and girls. I got conclusions below:(1) Students inurban weak high schools cannot understand trigonometric functions well, and they cannot useit well in math problems.(2)There are significant differences in understanding trigonometricfunctions between Grade One and Grade Three, but the differences are not very obviousbetween Grade Two and Grade Three, Grade One and Grade Two.(3)The description of thetrigonometric functions is not very different in boys and girls, the differences on the simpleand medium kinds of questions are not very obvious, but the boys do better than girls indifficult ones.(4)Through the analysis of test papers，I find out that some of the students arenot very careful to the questions, and the process is not standardized. Some students do notknow what are clockwise and counterclockwise.