Learning development which is oriented to Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS)
is a program developed by the government as an effort to improve the quality of
learning and graduates. HOTS is a solution to catch up with education. One of the
ways to improve the quality of students is upgrading the quality of learning which
is oriented towards higher-order thinking skills. The quality of learning also needs
to be measured by an assessment that is oriented to HOTS. An implementation of
the assessment can be seen in the school curriculum program, namely the Year-End
Assessment. The research was conducted toward the Year-End Assessment
questions of the Indonesian Language subject, especially the ones made for the
students of grade VII and VIII in the 2019-2020 academic year. There were three
types of questions: multiple-choice, short-answer, and essay. The questions were
then analyzed to determine the writing criteria (viewed from the HOTS question
writing criteria) and the form (viewed from the cognitive level). To obtain the
analysis results in accordance with the formulation of the problem the qualitative
research method was employed so that the results can be presented clearly through
descriptive data. In addition, the instruments used to analyze each item were also
adjusted to the ones provided by the government so that the research results could
be more accurate and accountable. The data resulted from the analysis of HOTS
question writing criteria and the cognitive level indicated that most of the Year-End
Assessment questions of the Indonesian Language Subject were still in the Lower
Order Thinking Skill (LOTS) category.