Analysis of verbal mathematics problems formulated by college students

This study analyzes and interprets the different themes of the verbal mathematics problems formulated by college students of Central Luzon State University. It also investigates the degree of association among the verbal mathematics problems formulated by the students with different socio-economic status, mathematical ability, verbal ability, sex, year level, and mental maturity.The research sample consisted of 300 randomly selected college students from different year levels. Stratified random sampling was used as basis. The population was composed of Central Luzon State University college students from different year levels for the school year 1993-1994.The verbal mathematics problems were then classified by the researcher and four of his colleagues in the Mathematics Department, according to sufficiency of data, complexity level and realism. Five English teachers of Central Luzon State University scored the verbal problems according to grammatical structure. The verbal mathematics problems were solved by first and second year college students who were non-respondents to determine the verbal problem\u27s difficulty level.Results of the study are, as follows:1. Economics, age, geometry, motion, trigonometry, work, number relations and probability were recurring themes of the verbal mathematics problems. Furthermore, 41.67 percent of the verbal problems had economics as their theme. 2. Highly significant associations were found between socio-economic status and realism mathematical ability and difficulty level year level and complexity level and year level and grammatical structure. There were also significant associations between socio-economic status and difficulty level mathematical ability and complexity level and verbal ability and sufficiency of data.3. There was a significant association between the themes of the verbal problems and year level. Sixty percent of the verbal problems formulated by the fourth year students had economics as the theme.4. The verbal problems formulated by the students correlated significantly with their mental maturity based on Piaget\u27s level of cognitive development. Students from the higher level tended to formulate problems that were difficult, more complicated, less error in their grammatical structure and with sufficient data