Reading Comprehension as a Mediator Between Mathematical Knowledge Retention and Secondary Students’ Solving of Real Life Word Problems

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ID: 311975
2026
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Abstract
Arguably, reading comprehension is a point of no return between the knowledge of mathematics that is held and the capacity of solving mathematical problems in the actual world. The paper undertook a study to investigate the relationship between the retention of mathematical knowledge, reading comprehension and word problem-solving performance of Grade 10 secondary school students in District Malakand, Pakistan. Based on a post-positivist paradigm and using a causal-comparative research design, the study formulated and tested a mediating model where reading comprehension was studied as a possible mediator among mathematical retention and actual life ability to solve problems on word problems. The population used was all students in the 28,885 students in secondary level (Grade 9 and 10) in 189 privately and government owned schools within the district. The sampling included the 18 schools and 355 Grade 10 mathematics students were chosen and finally sampled out of the 355 students and this was sampled by non-proportionate cluster sampling. Researcher-constructed tools were used to collect data in three categories a reading comprehension test, a mathematical knowledge retention test, and a mathematical word problem-solving test in real life. The data were analyzed by use of descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, multiple regression and ANOVA. Results showed that there was general poor performance with all the three measures showing that there are learning gaps. Correlation analysis revealed that, the variables show a strong positive correlation among themselves: mathematical retention and reading comprehension (r =.905, p <.01), mathematical retention and word problem-solving (r =.977, p <.01), and reading comprehension and word problem-solving (r =.872, p <.01). The multiple regression analysis revealed that the two predictors had a cumulative effect of 95.6 per cent of the variance in word problem-solving ability (R 2 =.956, F = 3843.201, p <.001). When the mathematical retention was considered, the mathematical retention had strong positive predictor (= 1.043, p <.001) and reading comprehension had statistically significant but negative beta coefficient (= -0.072, p <.01), which means that mathematical retention played an intermediary but conditional role. The results confirm that the possibility of students to solve their real-life word problems is mainly directly influenced by mathematical knowledge retention, and reading comprehension is a considerable mediator that allows the processing of textual information into mathematical operations. The findings of this research underline the need to integrate the instructional strategies that will positively impact the retention of the mathematical concepts and the acquisition of the reading comprehension skills in the mathematics classrooms at the same time. The study has deep implications on what curriculum should be designed, what teacher should do, and what particular interventions should be done to improve the mathematical problem solving of students of secondary education in real life.
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Authors Dr. Shahid Iqbal
Journal Social Sciences & Humanity Research Review
Year 2026
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