The Investigation On The Concept Teaching About Trigonometric Function

It has been nearly4years since the New Curriculum Standards were performed in Hebei Province. Under the guidance of the new teaching philosophy, the content, requirements and arranged mode of the teaching materials have been changed accordingly. However, how do teachers excavate the teaching materials? How do students master the mathematical concepts?The concept of trigonometric function was selected as an entry point, with students and teachers of Senior2,2012Session investigated. Through paper surveys, interviews and other methods, the following questions have been researched:1.The definition of the concept of trigonometric function has been changed greatly in the new textbook since the new curriculum was carried out. How do students master the definition of trigonometric concepts? What’s the problem?2. What’s the teachers’ attitude towards the change?3. How do teachers design the teaching of the concept (trigonometric concepts) to help students to learn conductively?The study found that:students would easily take the coordinate values as length values of the lines in the definition of the trigonometric function in terms of the unit circle. Similarly, students have ambiguous comprehension on trigonometric function lines. Commonly, they often pay too much attention to length but ignore direction, thus leading to a confused understanding of the concept. Students’ mastery of the nature of trigonometric function is not good enough. They do not know trigonometric function is also a kind of special function, and they can not simplify the calculation by using the trigonometric function lines. Also, teachers have different views with the defined methods for trigonometric function:the unit circle defined method and the coordinate’s defined method. Although most of them agree with the unit circle defined method, they do not know its nature.Based on the conclusions above, the teaching design on trigonometric function is improved with three recommendations as follows:students should properly know the historical development of trigonometric function:more attention should be paid to the generation process of the concept in the concept teaching; the teaching of trigonometric function lines should be enforced.