Study On The Development Of Early Algebraic Thinking For The Grade7Students

As we known, the algebra plays an essential role in mathematicscurriculum of secondary school. It helps students to understand the relationshipbetween the number and variation in the real world; it helps students to form the use ofquantitative relationship between thinking way of thinking; and the algebra helpsstudents mathematical thinking, problem solving, emotion, attitude and other aspectsof development.However, algebra is one of the most frightening branches of school mathematics.In order to study the formation and development of early stage algebra thinking of the7th grade students, I will focus on the difficulties in the transformation betweenarithmetic and algebra and the mark of the formation of algebra thoughts in this paper.I’ve chosen the7th grade students in a middle school in Chengdu as the object of mystudy, and I applied literature research method and questionnaire test method in mystudy.1. I designed the questionnaire according to my teaching practice and interview ofthe teachers, and I found that students have big trouble with “using letter to indicatenumber”,“comprehend of equal sign” and “linear equation in one unknown” duringthe process of studying algebra.2. In view of these existing problems for those students, I will adopt the theory ofduality of mathematics concept, APOS, mark awareness and schematism to elaboratethe reason of those problems.3. The forming process of algebra thoughts are: the process of “signifying” fromconstant to variable, the process of “formalization” from peculiar to generic, theprocess of “structuralization” from procedure to structure and the process ofoperationalization from unicity to duplicity. Therefore, I will conclude the maindifficulties for the students in the early stage of studying algebra with combination ofthose four processes and analysis results of the questionnaire test in this paper; finally,I will give some advice about algebra teaching against these difficulties.