Education

BECE 2022: How To Solve Word Problems With Ease

Asare Michael Baarffour (Devarsh) 3 years ago

As your kid progresses in school, they may encounter a few obstacles. There are several issues that many pupils find challenging to understand. Word problems are the most common issue.

A tried-and-true step-by-step strategy for solving word problems is really fairly straightforward.

Consider the word problem below.

Example: Kevin loves to read. He likes many different types of books. He has 3 large bookcases that each have 9 shelves on them, all filled with his books. If each shelf can hold 16 books, how many books does Kevin have?

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Read the Problem Out Loud

Teenagers have an urge to hurry through problems. This is because classwork and tests have time limits. If your youngster does not understand what the problem is demanding, they will be unable to solve it. Your youngster is stating and hearing the issue when they read the problem aloud. They have a sharper mental image of the issue and are better equipped to address it.

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Draw a Picture

Students, particularly younger students, must imagine an issue in order to understand it. They may begin to picture in their heads as they grow older, but at a young age, they should be drawing an image that explains the situation to them. The whole picture should include all aspects of the situation.

Ask, “What Do I Need to Find?”

Some word problems have direct questions. “Molly has two dogs, Jason has three,” for example. “How many dogs do Molly and Jason have altogether?” This one, on the other hand, requires some thinking. This issue has more than one solution. To figure out how many books he has, we must first determine how many shelves he has and then determines how many books are on each shelf.

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List What is Given

BECE 2022 Word Problems

It is generally a good idea to begin by stating your understanding. You will not receive the proper solution if you attempt to tackle the issue without understanding what options you have. Consider the last time you attempted to fill in the spaces or make an assumption without having all the data. Your result was most likely not good. As a result, we must state what is provided prior to any difficulty. The learner should write it at the top or side of the scrap paper so that they may always refer to it while working on the issue. For this situation, my suggestions are as follows:

Kevin has 3 bookcases
Each bookcase has 9 shelves
Each shelve holds 16 books

Find the Keywords

Every word problem includes key terms to check for that indicate which operation to do. Finding the essential words will become simpler for your child as he or she practices word problems. Here are some of the most often-used key terms in word problems:

Operation	Keywords
Addition	“all together”, “both”, “combined”, “total”* “additional”
Subtraction	“decrease”, “difference”, “fewer”, “how many more”, “how much greater”, “have left”, “remain”
Multiplication	“doubled/tripled”, “each” “equal groups” “in all”, “of”, “per”
Division	“equal parts” “split between” “separated”, “percent”

Solve

According to the chart above, we should use multiplication. First, we should multiply the number of shelves per case by the number of cases. 9 shelves per case x 3 bookcases = 27 shelves. Next, we must multiply the number of books per shelf by the number of shelves. 27 shelves x 16 books per shelf = 432 books.

Check your answer

The last step of course is to check your work by seeing if the answer fits the question asked. Mathematically, we can check our work by doing the opposite of whatever operation we used. So for this problem, we can divide 432 by 16, and we will get 27, then divide 27 by 3 and get 9.

Even though word problems might be tough for youngsters, having them follow these basic 7 stages can help them better grasp word issues and look past the intricate terms. Soon, world problems will no longer be as troubling for them, and children will mature into more confident, motivated learners.