COMPUTER SUPPORT FOR MATHEMATICAL WORD
PROBLEM SOLVING
Guided by Thai Teachers’ Views
Wanintorn Supap
1
Institute for Innovative Learning, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand
Kanlaya Naruedomkul
Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand
Nick Cercone
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Faculty of Science and Engineering, York University, Ontario, Canada
Keywords: Mathematical Word Problem, Word Problem Solving, Teachers’ views, Natural Language Understanding.
Abstract: This study investigates Thai teachers’ views in teaching and learning mathematical word problem, and the
technology implementation to enhance teaching and learning mathematical word problem. Data were
collected by use of semi-structured interviews with 24 mathematics teachers. The result of this study
showed that the students’ major difficulty in solving mathematical word problem lies in the understanding
of the problem and the translation of the problem into equations. Therefore, the teachers’ suggestions led to
the design of a tool to help improve students’ performance in solving mathematical word problem.
1 INTRODUCTION
In elementary school mathematics education, the
story problem or mathematical word problems are
applied to daily situations as the initial stage of
learning. Providing practice with real life problem
situations can motivate students to understand the
importance of mathematics concepts and help them
to develop their creative, critical and problem
solving abilities (Chapman, 2006). Moreover, a
mathematical word problem is used to examine
students’ mathematics solving ability and can
increase the students’ interest as well.
Solving word problems is one of the most
challenging tasks in mathematics for most students
and they often display difficulties. Efforts have been
made by researchers in trying to identify the
difficulties faced by students in solving
mathematical word problems and the reasons
underlying these difficulties (Clement, 1982;
Cummins, 1991; Hegarty et al., 1992; Hegarty et
al.,1995). One main reason that causes this difficulty
is that solving word problems requires a range of
skills such as reading, understanding the
vocabulary, identifying relevant information,
choosing the correct operation, writing related
equations, solving the problem and expressing the
answer correctly. However, students’ major
difficulty in solving a mathematical word problem
lies in the understanding of the problem and
translating the problem into equation.
Technology and computers have played a big
role in improving the quality of education today.
One of the most important tasks in mathematics
education is the revision of curricula and teaching
method to take advantage of electronic information
technology. Technology can provide teachers and
students with tools for solving mathematics,
dynamic environments and creating solutions to
problems of teaching and learning mathematics.
Therefore, to ensure that the student can cope
with difficulties in solving mathematical word
1
The author wish to acknowledge the support of the The Project
for the Promotion of Science and Mathematics Talented Teacher
(PSMT).
245
Supap W., Naruedomkul K. and Cercone N. (2010).
COMPUTER SUPPORT FOR MATHEMATICAL WORD PROBLEM SOLVING - Guided by Thai Teachers’ Views.
In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 245-250
Copyright
c
 SciTePress

problems and to increase students’ learning
achievements and develop mathematical solving
abilities, we design MathMaster based on Thai
teachers’ interview in a way that guides students
through step-by-step instructions to form the
equation. The interview questions concern
difficulties in teaching and learning mathematical
word problem, and technology implementation to
enhance teaching and learning.
With MathMaster, students would acquire as
much independent working experience as possible
which provides them with confidence in solving the
mathematical word problems.
2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
As part of the design of the project, the advice of the
experts were sought.
2.1 Participants
Twenty-four teachers (3 male, 21 female) in primary
school (Grade 4-6) from six local schools in
Thailand were recruited for this study. They ranged
in age from 25 to 61 (mean = 47.1, sd = 9.6) and
years of teaching ranged from 3 to 43. Each of the
teachers has earned a bachelor degree in different
fields.
Paticipants
0
2
4
6
8
25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64
Age
The numver of
teachers
Female
Male
Figure 1: Participants’ information.
2.2 Interview
The Thai semi-structured interviews consists of
three main parts:
 The background information (age, sex,
qualification, and years of teaching) and their
experience with computer software and the
internet;
 The difficulty in teaching and learning
mathematical word problems in the classroom;
 The use of computer software to support
teaching and learning mathematical word
problems.
2.3 Procedure
Each teacher was interviewed individually in their
school for approximately 20 minutes and their
voices were recorded and transcribed later.
3 RESULTS
3.1 Teachers’ Experience with
Computer Software and the
Internet
Twenty-one teachers have their own computer and
fourteen of all teachers use the internet. The
teachers’ capability in using computer software is
shown in Figure 2. Most of them have experience
using basic computer software such as Microsoft
Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint.
Two teachers use other software such as Adobe
Captivate and Geometer's Sketchpad (GSP).
Moreover, sufficient computer capability for
teaching and learning in three schools reflects the
ratio of computers to students as 1:1 and in another
three schools that ratio is 1:2.
The ability of teachers in us ing s oftware
0
5
10
15
20
25
Microsoft
Word
Microsoft
Excel
Microsoft
Powerpoint
Others
The number of
teachers
Figure 2: The ability of teachers in using computer
software.
3.2 Difficulties in Teaching and
Learning Mathematical Word
Problems
All teachers use the traditional method (talk and
chalk) in teaching mathematical word problems. One
teacher includes the lesson online in the class and
another teacher uses CAI (Computer-Assisted
Instruction) and provides CAI for students who need
more practice. The teachers were asked about the
difficulty in teaching and learning in class. The main
obstacles are the students’ individual differences and
insufficient time for teacher-student interaction. The
teachers have to prepare the lessons to support all
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students and each student is assigned different
homework. A student’s difficulty in learning
mathematical word problems lies in three aspects:
language and literacy difficulties, comprehension
difficulties (a high percentage) and computation
difficulties.
In language and literacy difficulties, there are a
few students in the class that have difficulties such
as:
 The students cannot read the whole sentence or
some words.
 The students have to read the problem one more
times in order to complete.
 The students do not understand some words in
the problem.
 The students read quite slowly.
 The students do not want to read the word
problem especially the long problem.
The teachers believe that the students have a
deficiency of reading skills and reading practice
since they were young, therefore the teacher help
students by providing them with more reading
opportunities and practices, using attractive stories
and allowing students’ peers to help.
In comprehension difficulties, most students face
difficulty in analyzing the word problem, selecting
the operator and forming the equation. The teacher
realized that comprehension is the most important
and difficult phase of individual thinking. Students
have their own way to solve problems. Teachers
normally found that:
 The students cannot determine what the problem
requires, which are the information part and
question part.
 The students always look for a keyword without
reading the whole problem and make mistakes in
selecting the operation.
 The students cannot form the equation.
 The students form the wrong equation.
Most teachers help students by asking them to do
repeated reading, repeated answering and providing
a clear presentation of the information and the
question. Some of the teachers present the problem
from simple to more complicated parts and allow the
whole class to understand, or they separate students
into small groups so that their friends can help find
solution.
Computation difficulties, involve students’
incorrect calculations and the student do not always
transfer units appropriately. Some students lack
computational skills especially in division and
multiplication. The teachers must let the student
practice calculation more and remind students of the
concept of addition, subtraction, multiplication and
division.
The mathematical word problem contents that
most teachers commonly found too difficult for
students are the percentage, the fraction and the
equation respectively.
3.3 Technology to Support Teaching
and Learning Mathematical Word
Problem
Due to the insufficient numbers of computers in
schools and insufficient time allotment for use, most
teachers do not use any technology in the classroom.
Only two teachers use the mathematics lesson online
and CAI in the classroom. Teachers believe the use
of technology in the classroom can improve
students’ mathematical achievements and attitudes,
and their understanding of mathematical concepts.
The examples of the comments are such as:
 Computer software is convenient both at school
and at home and saves time.
 Computer software can facilitate classroom
learning.
 Computer software can attract students’ interest.
 Computer software can help students practice
both inside and outside of the classroom.
 Computer software can enhance students’
understanding.
When asked about the role of computer software
in teaching and learning in the classroom, all
teachers agreed that computer software should be an
alternative in the classroom and depend on the
content of mathematics as well. The teachers suggest
features of computer software that can be helpful for
teachers and students; software should be easy to
use, attractive to students such as use of colours,
pictures, and animation, contain various and
adaptive exercises, and have score collection.
The functionality should comprise a clear
representation of meaning, phrase or sentence, the
relevant information and question, a chance for
computation, recommendation of the student’s error
and collection of the score and result, and adaptation
from simple to more complicated problems. A
teacher suggested that the computer software should
read the problems aloud that should help students
improve their reading skills.
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247

4 MATHMASTER
Our primary goal is to find an approach to
automatically convert a Thai mathematical word
problem into a mathematics expression. Most word
problems from any sources follow a three-
component compositional structure (Gerofsky,
1996):
 A set-up component, establishing the characters
and location of the putative story. It is often not
essential to the solution of the problem.
 An information component, which provides the
information needed to solve the problem.
 A Question.
Word problems are generally solved in two
major steps. (1) the comprehension step (this step
relates to carefully reading the question and
translating it into appropriate numerical equations);
and (2) the calculation step (this step involves a
procedure in solving the equation to obtain the
correct answer)
Our proposed architecture is shown in Figure 3.
The initial design of MathMaster offers students an
alternative approach to learn to solve mathematical
word problems written in Thai with ease.
MathMaster uses three main modules: word problem
understanding, information extraction and equation
formation.
Figure 3: MathMaster Architecture.
The Word problem understanding module
provides the word meaning to the student, if
requested, and guides the student through the
question-answering process to make the story of the
problem clearer. The Information extraction module
extracts the questions asked in the problems which
will be used as clues to eliminate irrelevant
information. Then, the math operators and operands
are selected for creating a complete equation in the
equation formation module.
4.1 Word Problem Understanding
To understand the mathematical word problem, a
student needs to know more, for example, the
meaning of the words in the math context and the
relationship between different units of measurement
that appear in the same word problem. In other
words, if the problem contains more than one
measurement unit, e.g., centimetres, metres, and
kilometres, these three different units should be
converted into the same unit according to the clue
suggested in the question. Therefore word problem
understanding consists of four sub-modules:
reading, phrase segmentation, semantic analysis and
unit transformation.
The reading module provides the information of
any word requested by the student. Information
provided includes the word definition or meaning,
examples of usage and pictures if possible. In Figure
4, a student requests the definition of “


(twice)” by highlighting the word and Figure 5
presents the meaning of the word “

(twice)”
together with an example of how the word is used
and a picture to aid easy understanding.
In Thai:







36 


In English:
There are milk and almond chocolates in one box. The number of milk chocolates are
twice the number of almond chocolates. There are 36 almond chocolates in that box.
How many milk chocolates are in the box?
Figure 4: Example of word problem and marked word.
Figure 5: Example of information provided for the word
“twice”
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Due to the nature of the Thai writing system, a
word problem is written in a sequence of alphabet
symbols with no mark at the end of words, phrases
or sentences. Unlike English, “ ” (space) is used as a
word boundary and “.” (full stop) is used to mark the
end of phrases and sentences. Therefore, in the
phrase segmentation step, the input word problem
must be segmented into short phrases based on the
Thai grammar.
In semantic analysis, each phrase is analyzed in
terms of meaning. MathMaster can help the student
to understand phrases by asking a few questions.
Figure 6 shows the example of information after
semantic analysis.
A set-up component:
There are milk and almond chocolates in one
box.
An information component:
The number of milk chocolates are twice the
number of almond chocolates. There are 36 almond
chocolates in that box.
A Question:
How many milk chocolates are in the box?
Figure 6: Example of word problem and seperated
information.
In Solving mathematical word problems, a
student must pay attention to units of measurement
(e.g., เมตร-meter, นิ้ว-inch, ไมล์-mile) and quantity (e.g.,
โหล-dozen, แท่ง-stick, อัน-item) since they have a great
effect on the equation formation part. In the unit
transformation step, all units referenced in the word
problem are examined thoroughly before the unit
conversion can be performed.
4.2 Information Extraction
To a student, determining the relevant information
embedded in the problem is relatively difficult. This
module was designed to identify the question asked
in the problem and then uses keyword extraction
from the question to search for the given information
as illustrated in Figure 7.
A Question:
How many milk chocolates are in the box?
Given information:
 The numbers of milk chocolates are twice the
number of almond chocolates.
 There are 36 almond chocolates in that box.
Figure 7: Information Extraction.
4.3 Equation Formation
The given information, extracted in the previous
step, specifies the operands and the operators to be
used in equation forming. This step completes the
process by forming the equation, “X = 2 x 36” for
the previous example. For a more detail about
MathMaster see Supap et al (2009).
5 CONCLUSIONS
Insufficiency of computer, time and available
software causes most teachers to avoid use of any
technology in the classroom. Generally, teachers
tend to view computer software as a useful tool to
teach mathematical word problems. They realize that
students should have an opportunity to learn via
computer software in the classroom. Therefore we
suggest in this study that to design and develop the
system that can help students and teachers in
learning and teaching math word problem is useful.
MathMaster, an alternative educational tool,
offers students the opportunity to comfortably learn
how to solve mathematical word problems. It was
designed to automatically interact with student via
question answering process. Student can therefore
independently practice with step-by-step assistance.
MathMaster is able to automatically translate a
mathematical word problem written in Thai into
mathematical language and clearly present each step.
To perform a reliable translation, MathMaster must
understand the terms in the mathematical context,
determine what is to be solved, know the
relationships between units referred in the problem,
recognize the connection between objects mentioned
in the relevant information, and select the
appropriate operators and operands.
REFERENCES
Chapman, O. (2006). Classroom practices for context of
mathematics word problems. Educational Studies in
Mathematics, 62(2), 211-230.
Clement, J. (1982). Algebra word problem solutions:
thought processes underlying a common
misconception. Journal for research in mathematics
education, 13(1), 16-30.
Cummins, D.D. (1991) Children's interpretations of
arithmetic word problems. Cognition & Instruction, 8,
261-289.
Gerofsky, S. (1996). A linguistic and narrative view of
word problems in mathematic education. For the
Learning of Mathematics, 16, 36-45.
COMPUTER SUPPORT FOR MATHEMATICAL WORD PROBLEM SOLVING - Guided by Thai Teachers' Views
249

Hegarty, M., Mayer, R. E., & Green, C. E. (1992).
Comprehension of arithmetic word problems:
Evidence from students' eye fixations. Journal of
Educational Psychology, 84(1), 76-84.
Hegarty, M., Mayer, R. E. & Monk, C. A. (1995).
Comprehension of arithmetic word problems: A
comparison of successful and unsuccessful problem
solvers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 87, 18-
32.
Supap, W., Naruedomkul, K. & Cercone, N. (September,
2009). Steps Toward Accurate Math Word Problem
Translation. Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE Toronto
International Conference - Science and Technology for
Humanity, Canada, 49-53.
APPENDIX
The interview questions
Part 1: Teachers’ background and their experience
with computer software and using the
Internet.
1. Sex
2. Age
3. Qualification
4. Years of teaching
5. Teaching Grade
6. Do you have a personal computer to use at
home?
7. What program can you use?
8. Do you have experience using the Internet?
If you have
8.1 How long have you used the internet?
8.2 For what purpose do you use the
Internet?
9. How does the ratio between computer and
student in computer lab?
Part 2: The difficulty in teaching and learning
mathematical word problems in the
classroom.
10. What are the problems in teaching
mathematical word problems?
11. What do you think about the causes of each
problem?
12. What did you do to solve the problems?
13. What does the content of mathematical word
problems that student face difficulty?
Part 3: The use of computer software to support
teaching and learning mathematical word
problems.
14. Do you ever use computer software about
mathematical word problems?
If yes,
14.1 What is its capability?
14.2 What is your opinion toward that
computer software? (advantage and
disadvantage)
14.3 Do you ever use that computer software
in the classroom? If yes, how do you
implement that computer software in the
classroom?
15. What do you think of the contributions of
computer software about mathematical word
problems for you?
16. What do you think of using such computer
software about mathematical word problems
in the classroom?
If you think it should be use
16.1 How do you implement computer
software about mathematical word
problems in the classroom?
17. What do you think about the capability or
function of computer software that should
support mathematical word problems
teaching and learning?
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