ANALYSIS OF STUDENT DIFFICULTIES IN MATHEMATICS PROBLEM SOLVING ABILITY AT MTs SWASTA IRA MEDAN

This study aims to describe the analysis of student difficulties in solving math problems class VIII MTs SWASTA IRA Medan. Research instruments used tests and interviews. The type of research is qualitative descriptive. The subjects of this study are students of class VIII MTs SWASTA IRA Medan academic year 2016/2017 which amounted to 39 people. The results showed that the percentage of problem solving ability of students in the indicators of problem understanding of problem solving was 84.62%, indicator planning was 61.54%, the indicator of performing the plan was 39.74%, and the confirmation of the answer indicator was 32.05%. And students' difficulties in solving such problems 1) students have difficulty solving mathematical problems in reading text or questions, 2) students always misinterpretation the problem, 3) If students don’t understand the problem then they will guess the answer from the problem, 4) the students do not want to find out the solution of the problem given, 5) the students have difficulty in understanding the problem so can’t interpreted it into symbol form.