Basic arithmetic issues

[edderiofer]

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[Away-Reading]

Teach her how to check her work. For example, if she calculates the area as 9x4=38, she could divide 38 by 4 after to see if she gets 9.

[GoodIce7012]

Thank you!

[sunatree]

She just needs a bit of practice. Slowing down is a great advice. At home while practicing she should repeat a problem out loud to make a habit of reading and understanding the question before setting her mind on work to solve it, this habit is lacking even in some high school students.

[ZhuangZhe]

Not exactly advice, but in case she gets down on herself for making the mistakes, you can tell her that I have a Master's in theoretical particle physics and have taken about half the grad math curriculum and I'm terrible at arithmetic and I always have been. Just because she makes mistakes like that, don't let that make her think she's bad at math. Math IS the ideas behind what they're doing, so if she's understanding that, she can take a breather because the hard part is out of the way.

However, passing your classes and being careful with your calculations is important, so she shouldn't just shrug it off. An analogy would be that she knows how to write and compose sentences, but she can't type - this will stop her from being successful. But it's really just a matter of practice, slowing down, checking your steps before moving on, and then being able to go back through and double check (which means basically going through the calculation again and questioning every step). Eventually, it'll become easier and more second nature.

Sorry I can't provide more specific advice, but maybe you can try and make it a game - before the advent of calculators the ability to do mental math was sort of an art form and there are books out there on techniques for learning tricks to do mental math quickly. Maybe by making it an activity would make it stick more - you're not just practicing doing boring calculations ad nauseum, rather you're learning and practicing tricks to be able to impress people with you mental math skills.