Students' Understanding Towards The Concept Of Periodic Function

Function is the esseatial part of senior high school.Mathematic and its period is the stress and difficulty in the teaching of Function.In order to examine students understanding towards Periodic Function,we adopt questionnaire investigation, looking for some valuable finding for our mathematics teaching. In this research,we first examine 117 students who have not learnt Periodic Function middle school to analyse students'understanding level towards period. Then we examine 419 students in Grade 1 and Grade 2 in Senior high school and interview some students. According to different grade, different school pattern and sex ,we examine students' understanding on the concept of Period Phenomenon and Periodic Function, as well as the nature of Periodic Function. We draw some conclusions hereinafter.(1)Students' understanding towards Period Phenomenon.Period Phenomenon is the common phenomenon in daily life and it is familiar to our students. Taking these axamples to lead into Function learning is quite useful. There're two main reasons in students' lack of examples towards Period Phenonemon. First the description of the Period Phenomenon is not clear .Though they recognize the relation between the examples and the Period, their description is not complete . Two ,they regard if there is regularity there is period. From different grade, senior 1 understanding is the best, junior 3 the next and senior 2 the last. From different school pattern ,key middle school is better than ordinary middle school. From sex, boys are better than girls.(2) Students' understanding towards the concept of Periodic Function .Students' understanding towards the definition of Periodic Function is not deep. They always understand the concept directly. Their regard towards period and minimal positive period is the worst. And there are also some probleme understanding the image of Periodic Function. From different grade ,senior 2 is better than senior 1. From different school pattern ,key middle school is sjghtly better than ordinary middle school. From different sex, boys are better than girls.(3) Students' understanding towards Non-complete period.Students' understanding towards Non-complete period is good. For the questions are common in daily life, if the backgroud is more familiar ,students can find the periodic relationship in the questions faster. There is no difference between different grade and different school pattern in understanding the Non-complete period.But boys do better than girls.(4) Students' understanding towards the adoption of the nature of the Periodic Function. Students' understanding towards the nature of the Periodic Function is low. Only a fewstudents can understand period and its parity and symmetry. Students understand the period of function through realistic model. From grade ,senior 2 is better than senior 1. From school pattern ,key middle is obviously better than ordimary Middle School. There is no difference between boys and girls.On the course of teaching ,we should update teaching methods and let students pay more attention in understanding.Meanwhile ,we should dig intension and extension , develop students' learning ability in excauating period's meaning.