Questions Syllabus Answers

1 MA4-4NA D
2 MA4-4NA D

3 MA4-5NA B

4 MA4-9NA B

5 MA3-17MG C

6 MA4-8NA D

7 MA3-9MG E

8 MA3-9MG 10

9 MA4-8NA 2 or -2

10 MA3-9MG B

11 MA4-4NA C

12 MA3-8NA B

13 MA4-15MG C

14 MA4-5NA C

15 MA4-17MG 128

16 MA3-7NA B

17 MA3-18SP 40

18 MA3-14MG 30

19 MA3-6NA 402x5

20 MA3-7NA D

21 MA4-17MG D

22 MA3-17MG A
23 MA3-11MG 1250

24 MA4-14MG A

25 MA4-19SP C

26 MA4-19SP 150

27 MA3-16MG 150

28 MA4-5NA D

29 MA3-7NA A

30 MA3-12MG 256

31 MA4-14MG C

32 MA4-12MG 300
 Report

Three year 7 students were chosen to conduct NAPLAN test. They were from different
academic success levels. Students will be referred as Student 1, Student 2 and Student 3 in
this paper. The test was undertaken at separate places and supervised to ensure students
performed individually. The test was marked right after they finished and which student had
more errors was determined for the interview process. The purpose of the administration of
the assessment to Year 7 students was to apply Newman’s Error Analysis (NEA) and record
the implications. In this paper, there will be an analysis of three Year 7 students’ NAPLAN
performance and one deep analysis of the lowest performing student in line with Newman’s
Error Analysis.

The marking process involved determining students’ success levels after the test. The results
for Students 1 and 2 were 7 errors and for Student 3 was 17 errors. The most mistaken
questions are 22,25,29,31 and 32 which were common errors for all of the three students.
Additionally, questions 26, 28 and 30 are chosen wrongly by at least two students. Topic
areas of the wrong answers are Volume, Ratios and Rates, Linear relationships, Data
collection and representation, Fractions, Decimals and Percentages, Volume, Single data
variable analysis. It can be presumed that students could not answer these questions correctly
due to not learning some of the topics yet in Year 7 and not remembering the pre-knowledge
from prior years of learning since they have not been revised. Especially questions 25,30 and
32 which require knowledge integration of real world examples and conversion of integers,
mass, graphs and data were done incorrectly by all students. This might be because they were
not taught these topics in a conceptual way or that they are not used to complex questions.
One of the common mistake that all three of the students did was question 22 which requires
prior knowledge since it is from stage 3 topic area. The reason for this might be that they
have not been provided revision of stage 3 which resulted in them to forget previous content
since this topic area is not in stage 4. Question 29 asks students to point a certain fraction on
the horizontal and vertical number lines after they convert the decimal number. Since this
question requires a combination of two operations students might get confused in finding the
correct point to put in especially if they are not taught in that structure. Question 31 is a
volume question which they have not learnt yet. Finally, data representation and
interpretation questions which are 25 and 27 were other mistaken questions. This might also
be due to lack of revision.

In this part of the report, Student 3’s interview detailed process and analysis in light of NEA
will be provided. Student 3 is selected for this process because he/she was the lowest
achiever in the NAPLAN results. The NEA process involves the discussion of a few
questions with the student which helps determine which part of the question the student is
lacking the skill to solve. Those questions are: to identify reading errors (R), “Read the
question to me. If you don’t know a word leave it out.”, to identify comprehension errors (C),
“Tell me, what the question asked you to do.”, to identify transformation errors (T), “Now
tell me what method you used to find the answer.”, to identify process skills error (P): “Now
go over each step of your working, and tell me what you were thinking.”, to identify
encoding errors (E) - an inability to express an answer in an acceptable form: “Tell me, what
is the answer to the question? Point to your answer” (Ley, Lecture 7, 2017). For each wrong
question student 3 is asked these questions in the same flow and stopped when a wrong
response is given and the wrong response is noted with the abbreviation of the error
determining question.

During the interview when Student 3 was asked to read questions 13 and 24 as a first step of
NEA, student realised that he/she misunderstood the question before marking the wrong
answer which indicates that it was a careless error (X) and therefore was disregarded from
this analysis. Student 3 had comprehension mistakes in questions 14 and 28 which covers the
topic areas percentages and decimals respectively. Moreover, errors in questions 15, 18, 25,
29 and 31 were determined to be at the step of process skills (P). The student was able to read
the question and understood the concept. However, she did not know how to do them or had
wrong question techniques to solve then. The final error type was transformation (T) which
appeared in questions 16 (percentages), 17 (data representation and interpretation), 26 (data
representation and interpretation) and 32 (decimals and mass combined) ().

The versatility and effectiveness of the Newman technique can be perceived in the following
interview segment which relates to a discussion concerning question 13. Before the interview
started, student was told in a friendly manner that he/she would redo the questions he/she did
before with the guidance of the teacher (i.e. through the implementation of NEA) which
would help her improve her mathematical skills and attain better results. After this process
the following dialogue took place between the student and the interviewer. (In the transcript,
“I” represents interviewer, “S” represents student).
I: Could you please read the question for me?
S: Student reads the question correctly
I: What is question asking you to do?
S: the question is asking me how much is $10 into 40? Wait… no what is $40 into….I do not
know… what is $40 that changed to 10?

The interview continued in this format and followed the same process for every question
student 3 answered incorrectly. However, the interview clearly shows the original error could
be classified as a Comprehension error as the student read the question right but did not
understand it correctly even when she tried several times. Although the questioning process
was conducted in regards to Newman’s analysis, interviewer added some directive questions
to avoid a forceful manner.

Overall, the merits of the NEA were observed through the implementation of this interview
process as the level of understanding and limitations of the student who was interviewed
were clearly identified. In the discussion regarding a number of questions he/she answered
incorrectly, the interviewer was able to determine the learning needs of the student as well as
the mathematical skills he/she needed to improve. In a classroom setting, this method can
help a teacher analyse student capacity and learning needs and develop programs and lessons
to suit individual learners.
 Justification

The NAPLAN 2012 test was conducted to three Year 7 students to determine the lowest
achiever in order to interview the student in line with Newman’s Error Analysis technique. The
report component consists of a chart which includes questions, related syllabus stage topic
areas as well as the correct answers. In the NAPLAN test students were asked to answer 32
questions from Stages 3 and 4 with most of the questions requiring Stage 3 knowledge. This
investigation was undertaken to determine the error phases of the lowest achieving student
according to the NEA technique. In this part of the study, there will be an analysis of the report
which details the performance of the three students and the NEA interview process conducted
with the lowest achiever.

Common mistakes that three of the students made was reported to be the questions consisting
of real world examples and questions which required knowledge integration of few concepts.
In the report it was stated that the reason behind the students’ lack of performance for these
questions might be their ineffective teaching and learning methods. Teachers may be engaged
in routine methods of teaching for certain topics and may have a focus on students memorising
the information which limits its’ adaptability to differentiated questions (Skemp, 1993) due to
an overload of the memory. More specifically, an overload of the memory can lead students to
forget prior knowledge when they are learning new methods for new concepts.

Another impact of routine teaching techniques which lead students to memorize is that they
get confused which methods to use when they try to solve questions that involve a couple of
concepts. In the report this situation was recorded several times as students were observed to
mistaken questions which require prior knowledge and questions which involve the
consideration of a few concepts together. Skemp (1993) proposes the enhancement of problem
solving skills through the use of application based questions. He emphasises that problem
solving can be improved with the discussion and solution of real-world problems. This seems
to be essential because during the investigation students had common mistakes in real world
based questions. Proposed method of Skemp (1993) is to teach problem solving skills alongside
with structured knowledge development of the students. As illustrated in his article with the
example of directions to a place in comparison to a map being provided, it is essential to teach
students application of structured knowledge through examples of real life problems. This can
allow them to tackle each question with confidence and guide them to the correct response.
The report identifies some questions which all students answered incorrectly and it is believed
some of these common mistakes like Question 22 could be avoided if structured knowledge
was supported by real-life examples. Overall, when students are being provided with problem
solving skills it is necessary for the teacher to complement structured knowledge with effective
teaching methods to ensure students do not make similar mistakes.

Newman’s Error Analysis offers a deep insight to the processes of question solving to point
out specific issues behind students’ wrong answers. This can help recognise the possible
reasons for students’ errors in the process of solving a question and help teachers determine
applicable techniques as mentioned above with reference to Skemp (1993). According to White
(2005), NEA technique is quite applicable, adaptable, easily usable and widespread among
teachers. As a sample, the analysis of Student 3’s paper in light of the NEA method illustrates
the benefits of working with the student in deconstructing their response which include giving
the student a better understanding of their thought process and giving the teacher a clear
indication of the student’s level of understanding and skills needing improvement. With this
method mostly, Comprehension Transformation and few Process mistakes are observed in
students’ answers. Clarke (1989) claims that these kind of results from NEA requires attention
to the importance of language factor in mathematics teaching and learning and questions
appropriateness of current school programs which developed as a remedy to students’ learning
issues. On the contrary, Mellin-Olsen (1987) warns educators of the potential issues related to
this technique including not allowing students to develop their own way of comprehending and
solving problems. However, Clements and Ellerton (1996) maintain that NEA is just a scale
for locating the errors and is not a method which supplies firm outcomes.

Before and during the interview a friendly approach was chosen to limit students’ nervousness.
White (2005) recommends to communicate with the student in a friendly manner to make
him/her relaxed and clarifies that the intentions with the interview is to support him/her in
mathematical abilities and skills. As it is emphasised before, problem solving skills can be
developed through NEA with the addition of the “problem-posing approach” (White,2005). In
the article from Silver (1994), problem posing is described as generating new questions and re-
formulating existing questions during the problem solving process. Newman’s transformation
process mostly includes problem-posing. Moreover, NEA’s leading questions also constitute
problem-posing. Therefore, NEA is an effective method to determine certain mistakes of
students and their background allowing educators to better assess their situation and respond
to their learning needs.

In conclusion, Newman’s method enables the successful application of problem solving skills
development which entails a structured learning method by pointing to specific issues during
the question solving process. Problem solving skills in students can be enhanced through
problem posing and effective mathematic teaching methods as determined by NEA. As future
applications of NEA, educators’, assessment developers’ and book writers’ can take into
consideration the various kind of errors students tend to make in the process of developing
differentiated assessment types.
References

Clarke, D. J. (1989). Assessment alternatives in mathematics. Canberra: Curriculum

Development Centre.

Clements, M. (1996, 05 1). The Newman Procedure for Analysing Errors on Written
Mathematical Tasks. Retrieved from The University of Newcastle :
http://compasstech.com.au/ARNOLD/PAGES/n

Mellin-Olsen, S. (1987). The politics of mathematics education. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Silver, E. A. (1994). On Mathematical Problem Posing. For the Learning of Mathematics ,

14(1), 19-28.

Skemp, R. R. (1993, 01 01). Theoratical Foundations of Problem Solving A Position

Paper. University of Warwick , pp. 1-6. Retrieved from
http://www.davidtall.com/skemp/sail/theops.html

White, A. L. (2005). Active Mathematics in Classrooms: Finding Out Why Children Make
Mistakes – And Then Doing Something To Help Them. Square One, 15 (4), 15-19.