Page 206 - Pedagoška vizija / A Pedagogical Vision

Eleonora Doz, Mara Cotič, and Maria Chiara Passolunghi

tic information) influence both the time and the accuracy of performance
(Barbu and Beal 2010; Haag et al. 2013), despite the fact that these factors do
not alter the mathematical complexity of the problem.
An example of a linguistic feature that significantly increases language
complexity is nominalization, which involves turning verbs, typically denot-
ing actions, into nouns (Francis 1989). For instance, consider the following
problem with nominalization: ‘Pablo worked diligently and saved 245 dol-
lars. The next day, he was happy about the earning of 92 euros. How much
money does Pablo have now?,’ whereas the counterpart without nominal-
ization reads: ‘Pablo worked diligently and saved 245 dollars. The next day,
he earned 92 euros. How much money does Pablo have now?’ Both prob-
lems present the same mathematical structure and can be solved using the
same arithmetic operation (245 + 92 = 337); however, they differ in terms of
their linguistic complexity. The problem with nominalization is more com-
plex to solve(Daroczyet al.2020) sincenominalization increasesthedifficulty
of comprehension (Halliday, Matthiessen, and Matthiessen 2014; To, Lê, and
Lê 2013) and necessitates more cognitive resources for integrating the verbal
information.

Numerical Features
Naturally, difficulties in word problem-solving also depend on the numeri-
cal features of the problem, as some errors stem from arithmetic computa-
tion errors themselves. Numerical aspects, such as the magnitude of num-
bers (e.g. single-digit numbers vs. multi-digit numbers), the type of numbers
(e.g. whole numbers vs. rational numbers), the type of arithmetic operation
(e.g. addition vs. subtraction), and the presence of irrelevant numerical in-
formation can influence the time and accuracy of calculations (Haghverdi,
Semnani, and Seifi 2012; Raduan 2010).
An interesting numerical aspect that significantly influences the accuracy
of word problems is the presence of addition with carrying and subtraction
with borrowing (Daroczy, Meurers et al. 2020; Dresen, Pixner, and Moeller
2020). In addition with carrying, adding the units leads to a change in the
numberoftens.An exampleofaddition with carryingis14 +19 =33,andaddi-
tion without carrying is 14 + 11 = 25. Similarly, subtractions with borrowing oc-
cur when the unit of the minuend is smaller than the unit of the subtrahend,
necessitating the ‘borrowing’ of a ten from the minuend. An example of sub-
traction with borrowing is 33 – 14 = 19, and a subtraction without borrowing
is 33 – 11 = 22. Both children and adults take more time and commit more er-
rors when computing carry/borrow problems compared to non-carry/non-

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