Analyzing Students' Mathematical Communication Ability in Solving Numerical Literacy Problems

The necessity to improve students' mathematical communication skill indicates that a good and appropriate analysis is required to design effectively corrective measures. An analysis of mathematical communication skills could provide convinced descriptions related to students' mathematical communication abilities. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to describe students' mathematical communication abilities in solving numerical literacy questions. The participants of this study were six students of class VIII-B of SMP Negeri 1 Pasrujambe. The method used was a qualitative approach, specifically descriptive research. This study utilized written test sheets and oral test question sheets. This study was conducted through the stages of planning, executing


I. INTRODUCTION
In learning mathematics, one of the important basic skills that students must have is mathematical communication (Sandy., et al, 2022;Mutiarani & Sofyan, 2022). Mathematical communication is students' skills in expressing mathematical ideas in written or oral forms (Rachmayani, 2020;Hanisah & Noordyana, mathematical equations (Dwidarti et al., 2019). Meanwhile, numerical literacy questions are math story problems with more complex problems. According to Patriana et al., (2021) numerical literacy is divided into 4 types of characteristics, namely personal context, socio-cultural context, scientific context, and HOTS criteria.
In Indonesia, students tend to have low mathematical communication skills which need improvement (Munawaroh et al., 2018;Nuraeni & Afriansyah, 2021;Kanah & Mardiani, 2022). This was also conveyed by Vale and Barbosa (2017) who stated that there were many students who were struggling to convey mathematical ideas both in written and oral forms. Most students have mastered the basic concepts of mathematics, but the implementation of the concepts was unstructured (Pangesti, 2018). The main factor of students' errors was that students were struggling changing problems in questions into mathematical forms (Fitriatien, 2019).
This was in line with the observations made by the researchers at the setting, namely SMP Negeri 1 Pasrujambe in class VIII-B. The results of the observations showed that students experienced difficulties while working on story problems based on students' everyday lives. Students were able to understand the formula of the material, but students were not able to use the formula to present a coherent problem solving.
Students often write certain symbols, for example arrows, to replace the meaning of the equals sign. The difficulty of students conveying the idea of solving the problem often results in incomplete presentation of problem solving by students. The variety of student failures in conveying problem solving ideas encouraged studies probing the analysis of students' mathematical communication skills.
Based on the background of the problem and the description above, the purpose of this research was to describe the ability of written and oral mathematical communication in class VIII-B of SMP Negeri 1 Pasrujambe in solving numerical literacy questions with a sociocultural context. The socio-cultural context was chosen because of this context. This context was chosen in this study because the socio-cultural context was closely related to the lives of students and the surrounding community. The results of this study were expected to provide information for teachers to give appropriate assistance to students in solving numerical literacy questions in number pattern material.

II. METHOD
The study was a descriptive study with a qualitative approach. The participants of this study were six students of class VIII-B at SMP Negeri 1 Pasrujambe. They were selected based on the results of the written mathematical communication test for all Grade VIII students as well as recommendations from the mathematics teacher at SMP Negeri 1 Pasrujambe. Six students were selected and categorized into three students for moderate skill of written mathematical communication ability, and three students with low written mathematical communication ability. This study was conducted in the even semester of the 2021/2022 academic year.
In this study, the data collection involved tests. Disclose information in the form of known data and problems in the problem verbally 2.
a. Make a number pattern from the problems presented b. Explain the pattern of numbers obtained orally 3.
a. Explain the operations used in solving problems verbally b. Explain the solution steps obtained orally 4.
Explain the conclusions of the solutions obtained orally Data analysis techniques in this study went through three stages, namely data reduction, data presentation and drawing conclusions. At the data reduction stage, the test results obtained would be analyzed to determine the level of the students' mathematical communication abilities in solving numerical literacy questions both in writing and oral forms. The maximum score for each written and spoken mathematical communication test was 48. The data on the results of the students' written and oral mathematical communication ability tests can be calculated using the following formula: Furthermore, the score obtained by each student was categorized according to the categories of written and oral mathematical communication skills adopted from the study Andini & Marlina (2021). At the data presentation stage, the results of student tests that had been categorized were presented in a descriptive form based on the indicator that the students had met both in written and oral forms. Then the last stage of this Based on the bar chart above, the number of students with written mathematical communication skills in the medium category wer 5 students and 16 students in the low category. Meanwhile, there was no high category on written mathematical communication ability. Furthermore, from the grouping results of the written test, 3 students were taken from the medium category and 3 students from the low category for the oral test. The selection of participants in each category was based on the recommendation from the mathematics teacher at SMP Negeri 1 Pasrujambe while taking into account the characters of the students so they could work together in the oral test. The results of students' oral mathematical communication tests are presented in the following table: In indicator (1) written mathematical communication, only 1 student wrote down information in the form of given information of the problem. While the other 20 students did not write down given or asked information. However, while taking an oral test on indicator (1) of oral mathematical communication, many students were able to state information in the form of data that was given and asked correctly. In line with research Nisa & Setianingsih (2019 )which stated that on the written test students did not write down the information of what was given and asked, but students could state what was given and asked in the questions completely and fluently. Ramadhan & Minarti (2018) revealed that students considered that writing down what was given and asked in the problem was not important.
In indicator (2) of written mathematical communication, only 2 students were able to make correct number patterns. 8 students also understood the number pattern from the given problem but were not accurate in completing the number pattern. While other students did not write down and complete the number pattern of the problems given. In the question, there were 9 rows of seats with 5 rows of known numbers and 4 other rows of unknown numbers. The number pattern had a pattern plus 4 then minus 1. Some students did not complete the number pattern because students they inaccurately calculate the numbe. As a result, the next pattern also experiences errors. Some students also did not understand the meaning of the questions. Students were confused by the sentence "...follow the same pattern", Cholily et al., (2020) mentioned that students usually did not have important conceptual knowledge so that they could not solve certain problems consistently. This showed that to be able to communicate ideas well, students needed to understand the concept of the problem to be solved. This was in line with the statement of Tanjung and Nababan (2019) that in mathematical communication the messages conveyed were related to mathematical concepts.
The results of this study indicated that there were difficulties among the students in presenting problem solving ideas related to number patterns. In Soraya, Rosmaiyadi, & Wahyuni's research, (2021) revealed that there were still many students who were not able to express questions in determining or drawing a pattern from an arrangement of several numbers. In line with this study, some students were able to determine and formulate number patterns from the questions given while other students were unable to formulate these number patterns. The results of the oral test on indicators (2a) and (2b) of oral mathematical communication also did show a significant difference from the written test. Some students were able to explain the number patterns they got fluently, and some students were not able to make and explain the number patterns from the problems in the questions.
In indicators (3a) and (3b) written mathematical communication, for questions number 1 and 2, many students already understood the formulation to find solutions to the problems given and wrote down the steps correctly. However, only 2 students were able to write down the appropriate mathematical operations and the steps and provide the final result correctly. Some students were able to write down the appropriate mathematical operations and write down the correct steps but provided wrong final results. This was due to the lack of accuracy of students in calculating processes or due to the wrong pattern of numbers. These results were in line with a study by Khadijah et al., (2018) which revealed that some students were able to solve problems correctly and some students experienced errors due to lack of accuracy. And some students did not write down the steps of the process or students only wrote down the final results. During the oral test on indicators (3a) and (3b) of oral mathematical communication, most students were able to explain the operations used and were able to explain the steps for solving the problem correctly and fluently. But some students still had difficulties in explaining the steps of the mathematical solution. In line with the study by Nisa & Setianingsih (2019) which stated that some students were able to write down the steps for solving the problem completely and were able to explain the steps completely and fluently, but some students were not able to write down the steps for solving the problem completely and could not explain the steps of the problem solving correctly. While in question number 3 none of the students answered the question correctly. They did not calculate the number correctly and could not understand the purpose of the questions. From the results of the oral test, it was found that some students did not understand the sentence "...the audience was filled with three quarters of the capacity of all the seats". As a result, students multiplied the ticket price by the total number of the seats in the theater.
In indicator (4) written mathematical communication, only some students wrote conclusions from the solutions obtained. Some other students only wrote down the final results, such as answering short questions. As in the study by Syafina & Pujiastuti (2020 ) which stated that only high-ability students wrote the conclusions from the solutions obtained, while students with moderate and low mathematical communication ability categories did not write the conclusions from the solutions obtained. A study by resultIsmayanti & Sofyan (2021) revealed that students were not used to writing conclusions from the solutions obtained among students with high, medium and