Difficulties in the process of synthesizing all data in the content of an arithmetic problem by junior students with severe speech disorders.

Contact: Lisova Lyudmila the Ph.D. of Pedagogy, assistant of therapy and special methods of Corrective and Social Pedagogy And Psychology Department of Kamenetz-Podolsk National Ivan Ohienko University, Ukraine. 

The proposed article presents the results of the study of the peculiarities of difficulties in solving arithmetic problems, in particular, at the stage of synthesis of the content of the arithmetic problem by junior students with severe speech disorders. Based on our research, we have highlighted the levels of the formation of this skill. One of the areas of mathematical skills development for junior students with severe speech disorders (hereinafter SSD) is the solving of arithmetic problems that assist in preparing to perceive and master mathematics in general. The problems and the process of their solving take a very significant place in the training of junior students with SSD both in time and their influence on the students’ intellectual development. Solving arithmetic problems is of great importance for the development of speech too. Schoolchildren with SSD learn to build phrases, express their thoughts, analyze the meaning of words, establish relationships between them, and translate content developing active and passive vocabulary, the ability to correctly use words, and build widespread sentences. The process of solving arithmetic problems requires systematic mathematical and psychological training of junior students with SSD, which includes the proper basic readiness of cognitive activity. From the pedagogical point of view, it is important to learn what concepts junior students with SSD use when considering all interconnections; which mathematical operations they perform to answer the question of the arithmetic problem; in what sequence they build their actions to achieve the goal. From a psychological point of view, solving of arithmetic problems requires a complex of mental operations that a student with SSD should apply in the process of working on them: analysis, synthesis, planning of activity, control, disclosure of relationships between values, etc. This process is also called internal activity when solving problems. Therefore, the psychological (internal) component of the process of solving arithmetic problems includes all those mental operations that arise in the psyche of a junior student with SSD and contribute to the implementation of external actions in a certain sequence. As a result of the analysis of the materials of study, we found that in the synthesis of arithmetic data, junior schoolchildren with SSD demonstrated two types of difficulties: the difficulty of the mutual correlation of separate components of the problem and the difficulty of combining all the data of the arithmetic problem content in the form of arithmetic operations. We have determined that the difficulty of correlating certain components of the problem with each other manifested itself in the form of the following errors: incorrect correlation of numerical data with words: objects, phenomena, etc.; generalization based on external signs, ignoring the abstract meaning of the components of the problem; incorrect combination of arithmetic numbers and signs. The next type of difficulty that we traced when conducting the synthesis of the arithmetic problem content with junior students with SSD is the difficulty of combining all the data in the arithmetic problem content into the form of arithmetical actions. It was manifested in the form of the following error: the incorrect definition of the sequence of arithmetic operations needed to solve the problem. As a result of the final analysis of the research materials, we determined the formation levels of the skills of synthesis of all data from the arithmetic problem content in junior students with SSD. According to the analysis of the research materials, we observe a fairly large percentage of junior students with SSD who still need help in the process of synthesizing the content of the arithmetic problem by the end of the elementary school.

Key words: analysis, arithmetic problem, general school, junior school age, synthesizing, severe speech impairment.