Penelitian ini dilatar belakangi oleh adanya kesulitan siswa dalam menyelesaikan soal cerita matematika. tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mendeskripsikan kesulitan siswa kelas v-b sdn 014 tarakan dalam menyelesaikan soal cerita matematika materi pecahan. penelitian ini melibatkan 18 siswa kelas v-b sdn 014 tarakan yang berada di jalan pangeran diponegoro kelurahan sebengkok. data dikumpulkan melalui tes soal dan wawancara dengan 5 siswa mewakili subjek penelitian untuk diwawancarai dari 18 siswa. data dianalisis secara kualitatif untuk mendeskripsikan bagaimana siswa mengalami kesulitan dalam menyelesaikan soal cerita matematika. berdasarkan hasil penelitian ditemukan : a) kesulitan siswa dalam memahami penjelasan dan maksud soal dikarenakan siswa mengabaikan atau kurang memperhatikan informasi penting pada soal cerita, b) kesulitan siswa dalam memahami konsep dikarenakan siswa kurang terampil dalam memahami soal dan belum mampu menentukan informasi yang ada pada soal cerita. c) kesulitan siswa dalam memahami simbol dikarenakan pada soal cerita menggunakan operasi hitung pecahan gabungan antara penjumlahan dan pengurangan. d) siswa kurang mampu mengubah bentuk kalimat soal ke bentuk kalimat matematika. e) siswa juga mengalami kesulitan ketika dihadapkan dengan operasi hitung penjumlahan pecahan dengan penyebut yang berbeda. sebagai temuan terbaru, disimpulkan bahwa ketika siswa sudah mengalami kesulitan pada memahami maksud dan penjelasan soal maka kemungkinan siswa juga akan mengalami kesulitan pada jenis kesulitan lainnya atau pada tahapan selanjutnya. kata kunci: kesulitan siswa, soal cerita, pecahan

This research was motivated by the difficulties of student in solving the story-based mathematical problems. the purpose of this research was to describe the difficulties of grade v-b students at sdn 014 tarakan in solving the story-based mathematical problems related to fraction materials. this research involved 18 grade v-b students of sdn 014 tarakan located on jalan pangeran diponegoro, selengkung sub-district. the research data were collected through test questions and interviews with 5 students representing the research subjects which consisted of 18 students. the data were the qualitatively analyzed to describe the students' difficulties in solving the story-based mathematical problems. the research results found that a) the students had difficulties in understanding the question explanations and intentions since ignoring or paying less attention to the important information contained in the story-based mathematical problems; b) the students got difficulties in understanding the concepts due to their lack of competences in understanding the questions and unable to determine the information contained in the story-based mathematical problems; c) the students got difficulties in understanding the symbol since the story-based questions mathematical problems used a combined fractional arithmetic operation of both addition and subtraction; d) the students are less able to change the sentence-based questions into the story-based mathematical forms; and e) the students still got difficulties when facing the arithmetic fraction addition operations with different denominators. based on the newest findings, it was concluded that when experiencing difficulties in understanding the question explanations and intentions, the students also experienced difficulties in the other difficulty types or further stages. keywords: students' difficulties, story-based mathematical problems, fractions