Wheeler, L. J., & McNutt, G. (1983). The effect of syntax on low-achieving students’ abilities to solve mathematical word problems . The Journal of Special Education , 17 (3), 309–315. https://doi.org/10.1177/002246698301700307

Three tests composed of increasingly more difficult sentence structures were administered: The Easy Syntax Test (EST), The Moderate Syntax Test (MST), The Hard Syntax Test (HST).

A total of 30 eighth grade students in remedial mathematics classes participated: 19 males, 11 females, ages 13-6 to 15-1. Of this group, 29 students were Caucasian and 1 was Arabian.

The problems on all tests were selected from a fourth grade mathematics textbook and required addition and subtraction computations with and without regrouping. The tests contained only words or derivatives of those words considered to be at or below a fourth grade reading level according to the Dale-Chall List of 3000 Familiar words.

Syntactic complexity affects low-achieving eighth grade students' abilities to solve mathematical word problems. The study revealed no significant differences between the EST and MST, but did indicate significant differences between both these tests and the HST. Also, syntactic complexity may affect students' abilities to solve mathematical word problems even when the problems are at the students' computational and reading-vocabulary levels.