BECE Mathematics: Word Problems That Cost Easy Marks

2026-04-09 · 9 min

Translate story questions into steps, units, and the diagram that stops panic.

Word problems hide ordinary arithmetic in a market scene. Box the numbers, underline the question sentence, convert the units, then compute. Skipping the translation is how a student who can find 15 percent of 80 still blanks when the same numbers wear a trader and three basins.

Translate before you compute

Read the question once for the scene and a second time with a pencil. On the second read, box the numbers, circle the units, and underline the question sentence — the one that actually asks what to find. Many scripts calculate a total the paper did not request. The last sentence is the job. Everything above it is material.

Write a one-line translation before you calculate: find the new price after 15 percent off, or share 240 in the ratio 2:3:5, or how many tiles of 30 cm cover a floor of 4.5 m. If you cannot write that line, you are still inside the story. Stay there until the line exists. The line is cheaper than a page of working that answers a different question.

Draw when the story has a shape. A tank filling, a journey with two speeds, a rectangular farm with a path, a pie of leftover money — these are diagrams, not decorations. A sketch with labels stops you from adding litres to metres. The diagram does not need to be pretty. It needs the numbers on the correct sides. Markers can follow a rough sketch. They cannot follow a blank that hid a unit change.

Ratio first means parts. 2:3:5 is ten parts, not a licence to divide by five because five is the last number you saw. Write the word parts. Age problems want a now line and a then line. Discount wants original, percentage, reduction, new price — four labels, not a leap to a guessed selling price.

Units are where easy marks die quietly. Convert before you multiply. Centimetres to metres, minutes to hours, pesewas to cedis if the question mixed them. Write the conversion as a line: 4.5 m = 450 cm. Then compute. Students who convert in their heads invent a third number that appears in no question. That third number is a typical wrong answer sitting in the options if the paper is objective, and a typical method-mark leak if it is theory.

Ratio and sharing problems want a total of parts first. 2:3:5 is ten parts. One part is the quantity divided by ten. Then multiply. Write the word parts so you do not divide by 2+3 instead of 2+3+5. Age problems want a now and a then. Draw two lines. Discount problems want original, percentage, reduction, new price — four labels, not one leap to a guessed selling price.

Units and the question sentence

Show the operation in words on the left if your teacher accepts it: total cost, amount left, distance remaining. Words slow the panic and tell the marker which story quantity you are hunting. A naked 720 with no label is a number. A labelled 720 cedis remaining is an answer in progress. Progress can still earn method marks when the last arithmetic slips.

When you do not know the whole path, do the piece you can. If a two-step problem asks for profit after discount, compute the discount even if profit still feels foggy. Partial working is how theory papers pay you for being partly right. A blank because the second step was unclear pays nothing. Easy marks are often the first step you refused to write because you wanted the final answer immediately.

Practise with a three-column drill. Column one: the story copied short. Column two: the translation line and the diagram. Column three: the working. Time column two. If column two takes longer than column three, you are doing it correctly at the beginning. Speed in translation comes later. Students who rush to column three are the ones who answer the trader's age when the question asked for the discount.

On objective items, estimate before you shade. A 5 m by 4 m floor with 0.5 m tiles is near 80, not 8 and not 800. The wild option was written for the unit error. Estimation is faster than redoing every sum.

Objective papers hide the same stories behind four numbers. Estimate before you shade. If the floor is 5 m by 4 m and tiles are 0.5 m, the count should be near 80, not 8 and not 800. Estimation catches the unit error. Then shade. Changing an answer because another option looks round is not estimation. It is fatigue.

Keep an error list of story types, not of numbers. Discount, ratio, average, perimeter, time-and-work, currency. When a mock leaks marks, write the type on the list and do three more of that type the same week. Repeating the same mock without naming the type is how the trader returns in June and takes the same marks again.

In the exam, if a story is long, cover the first sentences with your hand after the second read and look only at the boxed numbers and the question sentence. The extra sentences are often colour. Colour is how a simple percentage wears a festival. You do not need the festival. You need the percentage, the unit, and the diagram that keeps them apart.

Translation line, conversion, diagram, labelled working. Practise that order on short school questions until it is boring. Boring methods survive a long paper.