The Types of Word Problem Discourse Structure in Mathematics Textbook Presented In Indonesian For Primary School Students

Abstract

Word problem is a type of mathematical problem delivered with a language as its platform, so that this factor does contribute to the ease level of the problem to be understood by students, including the discourse structure factors. Since textbooks are widely used in classroom as a source of mathematical learning, it is necessary to study them adequately in developing such a skill. This study aims at identifying the types of discourse structure of the word problem in the mathematics textbooks presented in Indonesian which is viewed from the number of components and the type of the integration of those components. There are three components in the word problems. They are initial situation, event, and question component. Nine mathematics textbooks of 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th grades were taken as samples with three books for each grade. There are 1,252 word problems found from those books. The study result about the number of components composing word problems also shows that 65% of word problems for fourth grade, 79% of word problems for fifth grade, and 88% of word problems for sixth grade consist of the three components. The others are word problems with only two components by omitting the first component which is the initial situation component. Viewed from the components integration type, the result of the research shows that word problems components combined for the fourth grade are the initial situation and events components while for the fifth and sixth grades are the events and question components. The integration between initial situation component and event component is indicated by the conjunction word dan ‘and’, sedangkan ‘while/whereas’, and a comma. The integration between the event and question components is indicated by the conjunction word jika ‘if’. The conclusion of this study is that, viewed from their discourse structure, most word problems for the fourth grade students are relatively shorter than those for the fifth sixth students, by omitting the initial situation component. It implies that there is not any introduction part to introduce the context or narrative elements whose function is to connect the real world and mathematics.

Keywords:             Word problem, mathematics textbook, structure of math discourse, initial situation component, event component, question component