The E3 rule violation problems were those in which the number statements had at least two numbers being operated on both sides of the equal symbol, therefore violating the rule that “equations must include two separate sentences if they have more than one numbers being operated on both sides of “=” sign.” On these problems students demonstrated no difficulty. As opposed to Behr (1975) and Collis’ (1981) findings, students in this study did not think, for example of , 6 + 2 = 5 + 3 as two separate sentences. Therefore they did not represent them as 6 + 2 = 8, and 5 + 3 = 8