Analysis Of Derivative Items In NMET And Teaching Strategies

Derivative plays a very important part in senior high school mathematics. It is not only the most commom and effective tool to study the problems of function’s monotonicity, change rate, maximum and minimum, etc but also the basis for further study in advanced mathematics. Therefore, exploring students’ derivative learning barriers and seeking for effective teaching strategies can be of great realistic significance for promotng derivative teaching and learning.This paper began with consulting relative literature, combed through those research fundings that have existed, and selected some derivative test questions in recent NMETs to design a questionnaire and an interview outline. And then, this paper completed the survey and interview among the students who come from two different classes in senior two, analyzed the result of the survey and interview to conclude what difficulty the senior high school studens have in learning derivative. The difficulties are as follows:(1) Do not fully understand the geometric meaning of derivative, have confusion among concepts of extremum, extremum point and the point that extremum obtained and do not clearly know the condition of obtaining extremum;(2) Do not understand the formulas thoroughly, do not firmly remember operation property and do not have a good command of derived function as well as property of its image;(3) Lack the ability to solve some basic derivative problems and transform knowledge, be unfamiliar with the solving ideas and methods about the application of derivative and dare not work out complex problems that involve in derivative.The main reasons for students’ learning difficulties in derivative are that:(1) Low reading comprehension abilities of mathematics;(2) Poor understanding on the concept;(3) Inferior capacity for remembering mathmtical formula and operation;(4) Failure to master fundamental knowledge;(5) Weak phychological qualities;(6) Lack of some basic mathematical thinking and methods of solving questions. Aimed at solving the difficulties above, this paper put forward the following six teaching strategies:(1) Actively develop students’ ability of reading comprehension and modeling;(2) Throw light on the concept of derivative from different aspects and in different ways;(3) Discuss with students about the approaches to remembering mathematical formula and strengthen training of students’ operational capability;(4) Pay attention to link up what explained before with the content explained later;(5) Intruduce relative cultural background information in class to improve students’ interest in learning derivative;(6) Reinforce the cultivation of mathematical thinking method.