Students’ Perception on Representation of Addition and Subtraction in Math Word Problems Using Indonesian Language

Words or phrases that represent count operations in word problems are bridges that connect mathematics and the real world. That linguistic structures are known as a semantic structure and influenced the complexity of word problems. This study to identify the type of semantic structure as a representation of addition and subtraction using Indonesian and to find out student perceptions of semantic structures that are difficult to understand. The document analyzed is a collection of word problem that made by teachers. The participants were primary school students and teachers for level five in Central of Java that majority of students use Javanese as the first language. The findings are as follows. First, based on semantic structure in word problem, the addition can be classified into merging, unification, change, and comparison. The subtraction of semantic structure can be classified into displacement, separation, change, and comparison. In multi-operations, there are many types which are a combination of that eight types, such as merging-displacement, merging-separation, and unification-separation-change. Second, such semantic structures are difficult to understand, especially the phrase "more than" to represent subtraction and “fewer than" to represent the addition.