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What Makes Word Problem-Solving Difficult? Factors Influencing Word Problem-Solving Ability

Task characteristics Individual differences
Linguistic features Domain-specific abilities
Numerical features Domain-general abilities
Interaction linguistic & numerical features
Environmental factors

Cognitive load Problem-solving strategies

Word problem-solving performance

Figure 1 Theoretical Model of Word Problem-Solving Difficulties (adaptation from Daroczy
et al. 2015)

lowing sections, we briefly describe the research on the role of task charac-
teristics, individual differences, and environmental factors on students’ word
problem-solving performance.

Task Characteristics
Consider the following word problems:

1. Linda has 16 red apples and 10 green apples. How many apples does
shehavealtogether?
2. Linda has 16 apples. She has 10 apples less than Jessica. How many ap-
ples does Jessica have?

Although both problems require the same arithmetic operation (16 + 10
= 26), the second problem typically poses more challenges due to its char-
acteristics (see, for example, Boonen and Jolles 2015; Schumacher and Fuchs
2012). Thus, the first aspect to consider when addressing students’ difficulties
in solving word problems concerns the complexity of the problem itself, i.e.
the problem’s linguistic and numerical features, as well as their interaction.

Linguistic Features
Difficulties encountered in solving word problems are intricately linked to
the linguistic complexity of the word problem. Literature has found that gen-
eral descriptive characteristics (e.g. word count, average sentence length),
grammatical features (e.g. using passive instead of active form), and most
lexical properties (e.g. use of ambiguous words, presence of implicit linguis-

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