Abstract
The teaching of Mathematics supported by problem solving is a didactic approach with international acceptance. However, it has been reported that university students still have difficulties that prevent them from being successful in this activity, where understanding the problem becomes one of the critical stages. Consequently, the objective was to assess the effectiveness of textual comprehension in the major Basic Education of Universidad de Machala, Ecuador, based on the application of a methodology that prioritizes the use of semantic keys in solving mathematical problems. The methodology allowed to develop actions and to apply evaluative criteria for the identification and description of semantic keys and the generalization of their mathematical meaning in teaching mathematical problem solving. It is concluded that the applied methodology may contribute to the improvement of Mathematics teaching via problem solving, basically from textual comprehension.