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This paper describes the difficulties faced by a group of middle school students (13- to 15-year-olds) attempting to translate algebraic statements written in verbal language into symbolic language and vice versa. The data used were drawn from their replies to a written quiz and semi-structured interviews. In the former, students were confronted with a series of algebraic statements and asked to choose the sole translation, of four proposed for each, that was semantically congruent with the original. The results show that most of the errors detected were due to arithmetic issues, especially around the distinction between product and exponent or sum and product in connection with the notions of perimeter and area. As a rule, the error distribution by type varied depending on the type of task involved.

Este artículo describe parte de una investigación sobre las traducciones de expresiones algebraicas, entre los sistemas de representación simbólico y verbal, que realizan escolares de educación secundaria. El objetivo principal abordado es identificar y clasificar los errores en los que incurren los estudiantes al realizar dichas traducciones. Entre los resultados obtenidos destacamos la influencia de las características del simbolismo algebraico en los errores cometidos en la traducción de expresiones verbales a simbólicas y la mayor facilidad para traducir enunciados del sistema de representación simbólico al verbal.Errors in the Translation of Algebraic Statements between Symbolic and Verbal Representation SystemsThis article describes part of a study on secondary students’ translations between the symbolic and the verbal representation systems. The main objective is to identify and classify the errors they made when performing these translations. Among the obtained results we highlight the influence of the characteristics of algebraic symbolism in the errors made when translating from verbal to symbolic expressions and the larger ease to translate statements from the symbolic to the verbal representation system.Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10481/36051WOS-ESCINº de citas en WOS (2017): 1 (Citas de 2º orden, 0)