AN EXAMINATION OF 7TH GRADE STUDENTS’ MISTAKES IN ALGEBRAIC EXPRESSIONS

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine students’ achievement rates in algebraic expressions and the mistakes they made. 100 7th grade students from 4 different schools in the center of Burdur attended to the research. The study is a qualitative research, which was carried out in the survey design, and the data was analyzed using descriptive analysis. A test that consisted of 6 open-ended questions about algebraic expressions was used as the measurement tool. During the development of the questions, algebra learning area of the 7th grade was considered as the scope. A 9-question test was developed by consulting expert and teacher opinions in the first place. This test was applied in a 7th grade class and 2 questions were excluded as they were not appropriate in terms of difficulty levels, and also, some questions which caused problems in understanding were revised. The students’ achievement rate is 68% in addition operations in the algebraic expressions, 43% in expressing a verbal expression algebraically and 26% in expressing a geometric representation as an algebraic expression. Their overall average is 69%.  Looking at the reasons behind the mistakes from a broader perspective, it was determined that the main reasons were failure to attribute a meaning to the unknown and therefore doing the operations by assigning a value to the unknown. In other words, it could be asserted that failure to understand the main idea of algebraic expressions (the concept of variable and the concept of algebraic expression involving variables) as a concept properly is the major reason.