Abstract
Descriptive problems can be used to grow student's ability of thinking logically and creatively, because it shows if the students had a reasonable way of thinking. Rate of descriptive problems is increasing in middle and high school exams. However, students in middle and high schools are generally used to answering multiple-choice or short-answer questions rather than describing the solving process. The purpose of this paper is to gain a theoretic ground to increase the rate of descriptive problems. In this study, students were to solve some multiple-choice problems, and after a few weeks, to solve the problems of same contents in the form of descriptive problems which requires the students to write the solving process. The difference of the scores were measured for each problems to each students, and students were asked what they think the reason for rise or fall of the score is. The result is as follows: First, average scores of 7 of 8 problems used in this study had fallen when it was in descriptive form, and for 5 of them in the rate of 11.2%~16.8%. Second, the main reason of falling is that the students have actual troubles of describing the solving process. Third, in the case of rising, the main reason was that partial scores were given in the descriptive problems. Last, there seems a possibility gender difference in the reason of falling. From these results, followings are suggested to advance the learning, teaching and evaluation in mathematics education: First, it has to be emphasized enough to describe the solving process when solving a problem. Second, increasing the rate of descriptive problems can be supported as a way to advance the evaluation. Third, descriptive problems have to be easier to solve than multiple-choice ones and it is convenient for the students to describe the solving process. Last, multiple-choice problems have to be carefully reviewed that the possibility of students' choosing incorrect answer with a small mistake is minimal.