The Research Of Symbol Sense High School Students

Mathematical symbols take an important place in mathematics. Mathematical symbolscan be computation and reasoning, and the conclusion is general. So the use of symbolsmakes the mathematical expression more concise, clear, accurate and flexible, and also makesthe learners and researchers choose effective information more conveniently and flexibly toparticipate in math activities, which accelerates the process of thinking and improve theefficiency of the mathematical activities. Experience summary and surveys are all scarce inboth teaching and research about the symbolic sense of the high school students. Lack ofunderstanding the symbolic sense situation of students makes teaching methods short ofpurpose and target. More of symbolic teaching is secondary to other mathematical content,and is often overlooked, which forms of teaching method rote. As a result, students were notenthusiastic about learning of the symbols, lacked of the method of learning symbols, paidinsufficient attention and the understanding of the symbol is too rigid and not flexible enough.The misunderstanding and misuse of symbol make mathematical reading become an obstacle,which serious impacts on the enthusiasm and effect of the students’ mathematics. Therefore,to find out the true situation of the math symbolic sense of high school students is useful tooptimize the teaching methods, which can make students improve the enthusiasm of learningmathematics and the efficiency of mathematics teaching.The article includes the following research questions:(1) How is the high schoolstudents’ development condition of symbolic sense?(2) Are the high school students differentin symbolic sense because the gender or professional?(3) Is the math achievement or Chineseachievement related to the math symbolic sense? There are methods of questionnaire,interview and statistical analysis. Firstly, according to the documental analysis results, theauthor selected four dimensions of symbolic sense. Secondly questionnaire was designed bymeans of high school mathematics knowledge, and used statistical software to analysis surveyresults. In order to deeper understanding of situation, the author interviewed some students onthe basis of the questionnaire research method.The results indicate that:(1) The overall performance of high school students in thesense of mathematical symbol is good, and the sense of use symbols and the basic symbolicability is strong, but the performance of deeper understanding of the symbol, the symbolsystem knowledge and comprehensive application of symbolic knowledge and othermathematical knowledge are all poor. In addition, the confidence of using symbols to solvemathematical problems is obviously insufficient.(2) The symbolic sense of high schoolstudents is no gender difference. But there is significant difference between physical sciencestudents and liberal arts students.(3)For the students who have good math achievement, thesense of mathematical symbols and mathematical scores are not related. But for the studentswho have bad math achievement, the sense of mathematical symbols and mathematical scoresare related. The sense of mathematical symbols and Chinese scores showed not correlation.Based on the findings, the author proposed some suggestions:(1) Increase the teachingof the history and value knowledge of symbols.(2)Enhance the explanation and practice ofthe symbols and symbolic expressions.(3)Increase the practice of the new definition ofsymbols.(4)Do more training of "a topic multi-solution" to improve students’divergent thinking.(5) Emphasis on the teaching of mathematical symbols of the poor students.(6) Increase the confidence of the students to learn and use mathematical symbols.(7) Cultivate the girls’ self-confidence of symbolic sense.