AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ ERRORS IN SOLVING MATHEMATICS WORD PROBLEMS RELATED TO LINEAR EQUATION

Abstract In solving mathematics task, students often do errors. Students do an error when they did inappropriate mathematics problem solving to its correct solution. Newman’s Error Analysis is used in this research including reading errors, comprehension errors, transformation errors, process skill errors, and encoding errors. Students’ error may be due to several causes which related to the previous knowledge or concept that have been learned. One of the topics in odd semester of school year 2016/2017 is linear equation in eleventh grade in senior high school. The understanding of this topic is important because this topic is needed for comprehending the next complex topic. In this research, students are given mathematics word problem for identifying the students’ errors in their problem solving. Mathematics word problems related to linear equation are used through this paper based test. The research purpose is to describe (1) What students’ error in solving mathematics word problems related to linear equation and (2) What students’ error causes in solving mathematics word problems related to linear equation. The researcher used descriptive qualitative research design. The data were taken at SMAN 1 Pandaan Pasuruan. Seven subjects of this research were chosen from XI-MIA 3 and XI-MIA 7. The researcher used test and interview for drawing data. Data reduction, data display, and conclusion will be used to analyze the data. The result of the research shows that the students do errors in solving mathematics word problems related to linear equation including reading, comprehension, transformation, process skill, and encoding errors. These errors happened because they do not understand perpendicular lines and key word in problems, do not understand about the problem, cannot determine linear equation, cannot use a right procedure of calculating, do not understand about the meaning of gradient, and careless in encoding. Keywords: Reading error, Comprehension error, Transformation error, Process skill error, Encoding error