A Comparative Study On Comprehensive Difficulty Of Liberal Arts And Sciences Mathematics Test Questions In The College Entrance Examination Of The National Volume Ⅱ

It has always been a hot topic for teachers,students and parents on difficulty of college entrance examinations questions.Students’ perceptions on the difficulty level of the test questions after taking the mathematics test are also different.For provinces that have adopted the division of Liberal Arts and Science so far,examinees generally believe that the Science mathematics is more difficult than Liberal Arts mathematics.Based on the revised composite difficulty model of the test questions,this paper studies the difficulty of the mathematics test questions of the college entrance examination in Arts and Science in recent eight years（2013-2020）（referred to as the Liberal Arts and Sciences test questions in the article）.Taking the national paper on mathematics — — National volume II — — of the national unified examination for admission to universities as an example（referred to as National Paper II）.The main research contents of this article are as follows: First,integrate the data of eight years for horizontal comparison,and analyse the similarities and differences in the difficulty values of each difficulty factor and the distribution of each difficulty factor at different levels in the Liberal Arts and Sciences mathematics.Then this article makes a vertical comparison to analyze the situation and trend of each difficulty factor value in the Liberal Arts and Sciences mathematics questions over the years,and different levels of difficulty factors.Based on the conclusions of the above research content,taking similar questions in Liberal Arts and Sciences mathematics as an example,this paper analyzes the differences in the examination questions of Arts and Sciences in the mathematical core literacy and thinking methods.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:（1）In terms of difficulty values of each difficulty factor:The background,mathematical cognition,operation,reasoning and knowledge integration difficulty of the liberal Arts mathematics questions are less difficult than those of the Science.Of the five difficulty differences between the Liberal Arts and Science mathematics questions,the largest difference is the difficulty of mathematical cognition and the smallest in the difficulty of background.There is a high degree of consistency in the magnitude of difficulty values for the five difficulty factors of the Liberal Arts and Science mathematics questions.From high to low,they are reasoning,operation,mathematical cognition,knowledge integration and background difficulty.（2）In terms of the distribution of different levels of difficulty factors: The proportion of the highest level test questions in Science is higher than that in Liberal Arts.Except for the mathematical cognitive factor,the level of the largest proportion of questions in the other four difficulty factors is consistent across the Liberal Arts and Science mathematics question.They are no background,simple arithmetic,simple reasoning and two knowledge points respectively.（3）In terms of the changes in difficulty values for each difficulty factor over the years:Science mathematics questions show an upward trend in background,mathematical cognition and reasoning difficulty,while the Liberal Arts mathematics questions have a clear upward trend only in the background difficulty.（4）In terms of the Changes in the distribution of different levels of each difficulty factor and its trend over the years:There is an upward trend in the proportion of questions at the science background level in Science mathematics questions,while there has been no test question of this level in the Liberal Arts for eight years.In terms of the comprehensive factors of operation,mathematical cognition and knowledge integration,the proportion of high-level test questions in Liberal Arts shows a downward trend,while the proportion of low-level test questions shows an upward trend.（5）Among the similar exam questions with different levels of mathematics difficulty in the Liberal Arts and Sciences,the core literacy of mathematics examined by the Science questions is higher than that of the Liberal Arts in terms of type or level,and the complexity of the Science is higher than that of the Liberal Arts in the application of mathematical thinking methods.