Barriers To Learning Of Trigonometric Function For The Art Students In Senior High School And The Corresponding Teaching Strategies

Mathematics is one of the most important subjects for art students in senior highschool. As the key elementary functions, knowledge of trigonometric functions hasthe following characteristics: high ratio of content in elementary mathematics, highlogic relationship between the equations and various transition ways among theequations. Due to these characteristics, the art students in senior high school usuallyhave much trouble in learning trigonometric functions. In order to get to know theexact situation of trigonometric functions learning of art students in our school, thethesis conducts various survey, give a thorough analysis on the data, and then givesthe corresponding teaching strategies.The study objects are the students from the four art classes in the third grade in ourschool (Yuqi Advanced Middle School in Wuxi city in Jiangsu province). Withconsidering the students’ learning attitude, method, ability, environment and theteaching method of teachers, the thesis conducts various survey includingquestionnaire, visiting, and observation.Results of the survey show that the art students in our school have four aspects oflearning disabilities on learning trigonometric functions: psychological learningdisability associated with ambiguous learning purpose and nonconfidence,capability-incurred learning disability associated with inexact understanding oftrigonometric functions and rigid application, methodology-incurred learningdisability associated with the dependence of rote learning, and teacher-incurredlearning disability associated with out-of-date teaching concept and teaching methods.Reasons inducing these disabilities have three aspects: student-associated aspect suchas insufficient learning motivation and interesting, teacher-associated aspect such asunsuitable teaching methods and the society-associated aspect such as somedisturbance on math learning.Based on the results of the survey and analysis, the thesis proposes the followingcorresponding teaching strategies. For psychological learning disability, the teachershould help the students to identify the goal of study, enhance the impetus of study,inspire the study motivation, improve self-confidence, stir studying interest, andcultivate curious desire. For capability-incurred learning disability, the teacher needs to train the logical thinking habit of students and establish logical discussingatmosphere among students. For methodology-incurred learning disability, theinduction method and observation-based replacing method is presented fortrigonometric functions learning. Finally, for teacher-incurred learning disability, theteacher needs to provisionally stand on art students’ side to try to understand theirthinking status, and also needs to maintain well psychological ability.