EFFECTS OF VERBAL CUEING AND A VISUAL REPRESENTATION ON PERCENT PROBLEM-SOLVING PERFORMANCE OF REMEDIAL ADULTS
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to determine whether instruction in verbal cueing, or verbal cueing with a visual representation, would have more facilitating effects on the verbal percent problem-solving performance of college remedial mathematics students, at two levels of reading ability. The study utilized a randomized block design. The 60 subjects were selected from among 430 students registered in a remedial mathematics course of a two-year community college in New York City, during the spring of 1980. Potential subjects were classified as Good or Poor Readers on the basis of standardized reading comprehension test scores. They were pretested with investigator developed tests of computational skills and problem-solving performance. The subjects were given one of two treatment conditions, based upon their course sections. Each treatment consisted of three programmed, self-paced instructional packages which were parallel in form, except for the independent variable of verbal cueing versus verbal cueing with a diagram. The treatments were designed to explain and develop the language and structure used in solving percent problems. Analyses of variance were performed on the posttest and gain score data. The results indicated that: (a) the subjects in the verbal cueing plus visual representation treatment scored significantly higher than the subjects in the verbal cueing treatment; (b) the Good Readers scored significantly higher than the Poor Readers; (c) there was no significant interaction between treatment condition and reading level for the posttest data; and (d) there were no significant gain score results. Based upon these findings, the following conclusions were reached: (a) Good Readers were better able to understand and process the problems than were the Poor Readers; apparently reading level influenced the problem-solving performance of subjects; (b) the verbal cueing plus visual representation technique had greater effect upon performance than the verbal cues alone; and (c) since no interaction was found between treatment condition and reading level, the premise that the treatments would be differentially effective for subjects of varying reading levels was not supported.
Subject Area
Mathematics education
Recommended Citation
NOLL, RHONA SUSAN, "EFFECTS OF VERBAL CUEING AND A VISUAL REPRESENTATION ON PERCENT PROBLEM-SOLVING PERFORMANCE OF REMEDIAL ADULTS" (1983). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI8308487.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI8308487
