Arithmetic skills are without a doubt integral to a student’s success or failure in first-semester general chemistry. The MUST (Math-Up Skills Test) is a powerful tool for assessing a student’s arithmetic logic and therefore serves as a great predictor for at-risk students. Early math reviews at the start of the semester are thought to help students develop or refresh the necessary skills needed for success in general chemistry. However, the improvement that students gain from such math reviews is yet to be quantitatively assessed. In this study, a math intervention was given to students in the second week of the fall semester. The MUST was administered to the students before and after the 1-week intervention to determine if the students have indeed improved their arithmetic skills. A control group had a similar design except their intervention which was a general chemistry review. The math intervention group had a significant gain in the MUST scores over the gain for students whose intervention was the chemistry review. Students were grouped by their reasoning ability, as measured by the Test of Logical Thinking (TOLT). Students with high or low reasoning abilities did not differ in their MUST gain by intervention; however, students of average logic abilities who also had the math intervention had significantly higher gains than those in the chemistry intervention. Although 33% of a student’s final course average could be accounted for by his/her score on the second administration of the MUST, it was not possible to expect any significant difference in final course averages by intervention, since all subjects were allowed to do both reviews after the study data was collected.

中文翻译：

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数学复习如何影响学生在第一学期普通化学课程中的算术技能和成绩？

无疑，算术技能是学生在第一学期普通化学课程中取得成功或失败所不可或缺的。MUST（数学能力测验）是评估学生算术逻辑的有力工具，因此可作为有风险学生的很好的预测指标。在学期开始时进行早期数学复习被认为可以帮助学生发展或更新通用化学成功所必需的必要技能。但是，学生从这种数学评论中获得的进步尚待定量评估。在这项研究中，秋季学期的第二周对学生进行了数学干预。在进行为期1周的干预之前和之后，必须对学生进行MUST，以确定学生是否确实提高了他们的算术技能。对照组的设计相似，不同之处在于他们的干预是一项常规化学综述。数学干预组的MUST分数明显高于那些以化学复习为干预的学生。通过逻辑思维测验（TOLT）对学生的推理能力进行分组。具有高或低推理能力的学生在通过干预获得的必修课中没有差异；但是，具有平均逻辑能力的学生也进行了数学干预，其学习成绩要明显高于化学干预。虽然学生的最终课程平均水平的33％可以由他/她在第二届MUST考试中的得分来解释，但是通过干预，不可能期望最终课程的平均水平有显着差异，