Analysis of Mathematical Representation Ability of Class VII Students of SMP N 14 Padang.

Abstrak

This research is based on students lack the ability to represent their mathematical ideas. Students have difficulty in representing mathematical models and words in solving problems. This study aims to describe the mathematical representation ability of class VII students of SMP Negeri 14 Padang. The research question is how the mathematical representation ability of students in class VII SMP N 14 Padang.

The method used in this study is a qualitative research with the type of research is descriptive research. This research was conducted in class VII SMPN 14 Padang with 3 research subjects, taken from 30 students. The selection of research subjects is based on the results of the completion of student representations, mathematics teacher suggestions and interview. The instruments used in this study were test questions and interview.

The results showed that the overall mathematical representation ability of students as a whole had a percentage of 16.4% . The percentage of students' mathematical representation ability by type (1) visual representation gets 82.7%, (2) mathematical expression or expression expressions get 38.9% and (3) representation of words or written text 23.3%. Based on the results of the study, it was found that the visual representation was higher compared to other types of representation. The low ability of the representation of words or written text on students is caused because some students are not be able to make steps to work with words, are not accustomed to, and there are students who are lazy to write the steps of work with words.

Based on the results, it is recommended to the teachers for giving a direction and familiarize students to write down ideas and steps for completion when working on problems and students more often do the exercises using the representation so that students can and are accustomed to solving problems that open the ability of representation.

Keywords: Analysis Ability, Mathematical Representation