Narrow Results

This paper presents problem-solving strategies that Singapore students (n = 1002) used to solve three word problems on speed and the errors they made. It is surprising to find that the Primary 6 students performed significantly better than the Secondary 1 and Secondary 2 students, while the performance differences between the last two groups were not significant. The strategy analyses reveal that the Primary 6 students could use the arithmetic strategies, model method, and guess-and-check method more successfully than the secondary students. More effort needs to be made to bridge the gap between primary and secondary mathematics, and more word problems on speed need to be included in textbooks used in secondary levels.