PLENK2010 I subscribe to Delancey Place. Every day I get an excerpt from an interesting book. Today's offering (Nov 4, 2010) is about cognitive miserliness: our tendency to jump to the obvious answer rather than the correct answer which takes a bit more work.
http://delanceyplace.blogspot.com/
During the last score of years, few mathematics teachers bother teaching how to solve "word problems" or "story problems". When the commercial tests give only 1-3 marks for a word problem, and the teacher does not teach how to do them, the student ignores them: they are worth no more credits than a sample calculation.
But the complete story problem is a complete essay. It follows the pattern of a technical report, which format is that of the Scientific Method of Problem Solving, the nexus of English, Science and Mathematics in secondary school. No matter how we actually reason, the convention of way we write it out follows that design. And it is worth at least 8 to 10 marks. (And yes, I have a free lesson booklet on this and others for sale.)
Do check out Delancey Place. I think you will enjoy it.
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