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Abstract: This paper, first it has reviewed the literature on the characteristics of mathematical word problems and their solution process. The review revealed that among the root causes for students’ difficulties with mathematical word problems, two factors are salient, namely the text complexity and the unfamiliar context. To shed more light on these findings, a factorial experimental study was designed with 80 grade 7 students from a school in middle class residents. These students were randomly put into the four groups of 20 each two as experimental and two as control group. Four tests were administered as pre-tests and post- tests to compare the students regarding their problem solving skills with the intervention of two kinds of rewording familiarization and personalization. The major finding of this study is that the rewording per se has meaningful effect on students’ understanding and solving of word problem.    

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Abstract: The main purpose of this paper is introducing modelling and application as a research domain in mathematics education through reviewing related literature. The first purpose of this review is to give a more clear meaning of modelling and application, and base on that, makes the distinction between modelling in mathematics education & modelling in other scientific domains. There are some other terms like Numeracy Quantitative literacy Mathematization and Word Problems that with some tolerance, are taken as equivalent term to modelling. However, modelling has salient differences with every one of them. Second purpose of this paper, is to introduce modelling cycle and its steps. Third, some researches who are working in the domain of modelling and application will be reviewed and then methodology and results of one of them will be mentioned. Finally, several open research questions for future research in the domain of modeling and application will be announced.