By
ATIKAH MUTHIAH
A Script
Submitted in a Partial Fulfillment of The Requirements for S-1 Degree
in
The Language and Arts Department of Teacher Training and Education Faculty
UNIVERSITY OF LAMPUNG BANDAR LAMPUNG
ii ABSTRACT
IMPROVING STUDENTS’ READING ACHIEVEMENT THROUGH SELF-QUESTIONING STRATEGY BY USING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT AT
THE FIRST GRADE OF SMAN 5 BANDAR LAMPUNG
By
Atikah Muthiah
The research has been conducted to help students’ improve their reading comprehension achievement. The objectives of this research are to investigate whether there is significant difference between students’ reading achievement before and after the implementation of self-questioning strategy and to find out the students’ response in the class of reading comprehension. Self-questioning strategy is a reading strategy which is assumed to be usable for improving students’ comprehension ability. This strategy is supposed to be able to make the students generate, think about, predict, investigate, and answer questions that satisfy curiosity about what they read.
The subjects of the research are the students of SMAN 5 Bandar Lampung in the 2012/2013 academic year. The sample of the research is X1 as experimental class consisting of 33 students. The design used is one-group pretest posttest. In collecting the data, the researcher used reading test and questionnaire. Besides, the researcher administers the pretest, the treatments and the post test. In this research, the repeated measures t-test is used to analyze the data.
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LIST OF APPENDICES
Page
1. Lesson Plan………. 53
2. The Distribution of Students’ Try Out of Reading Comprehension Test………...… 65
3. Difficulty Level and Discrimination Power of Try Out ……… 67
4. Reliability Table of the Try Out………...………….. 69
5. Reliability of the Try Out Formula………...………..…. 70
6. The Distribution of Students’ Score of Pretest………...……...……...……...……...…………..…… 72
7. The Distribution of Students’ Score of Post Test……….... 73
8. Students’ Gain between Pre-test and Post-Test……….. 74
9. Analysis of Mean Score (Pretest)...……….. 75
10.Analysis of Mean Score (Post Test)………... 76
1. INTRODUCTION
This chapter discusses the background of the problems, identification of the problems, limitation of the problems, formulation of the research questions, objectives of the research, uses of the research, and definition of key terms, as follows:
1.1 Background of the Problems
The purpose of teaching English language at school is to develop the students’ language skills. There are four major skills that should be mastered by students in learning English, namely listening, speaking, reading, and writing. One of the skills that cannot be neglected is reading skill because the success of their study depends on the greater part of their ability to read. Therefore, reading is essential not only to get the information but also to comprehend the text. There are several texts that are commonly used in teaching reading namely, descriptive text, report text, recount text, and narrative text.
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find supporting ideas and details. In other words, reading skill should be paid more attention to achieve the level.
As stated in English Curriculum for SMA/MA students, along with the higher level of difficulty on any text in the levels of education, students must be able to follow these developments of texts and improve their reading skills. However, the fact showed that the students were not able to adapt to the level of text difficulty which is more complex over the time.
Based on the researcher’s pre observation at the first grade of SMAN 5 Bandar Lampung, in general, the students had difficulty in comprehending and getting information from the text. Most of the students thought that learning English was difficult. Besides that, they still got difficulties to determine main idea, and answer questions based on the text. As the result, their reading achievement was below the expectation. To overcome this situation the teacher should generate students’ interest by applying the various techniques and selecting the proper text. By using the technique in teaching, the teacher can help the students think critically and develop their ideas. More importantly, the students can comprehend the idea easier and reach optimal results in reading.
this condition and then give a solution by selecting appropriate technique. Some students actually had a strong to memorize, and they succeed to remember the vocabulary. However, vocabulary can be developed by reading more often.
Referring to the explanation above, a teacher should be more creative and find out the appropriate technique to those problems in teaching reading that can improve students’ reading achievement. There are many techniques can be
implemented in the class, one of them is self-questioning strategy. This technique can help students understand more about what they read, stimulate the students to be engaged with the text and let them become independent readers.
In this technique, the researcher gave the text and the questions in order to build in the background knowledge. This phase is intended to build an understanding and to provide an overall text meaning especially in asking the question would be conducted at the beginning, during, and the end when students are reading a text.
Considering to the statement concerning self-questioning above, this study also investigated the students’ response toward the use of self-questioning
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post test. The response showed that most of the students has given positive impact on their learning, especially in identfying supporting details. Most of them agree that the reading activities were interested and enthuastic in the class of reading.
Students explained that there were several reasons that made them agree to the statement. The reason is that the students felt happy having new experience in learning English since the previous teachers have never had this kind of activity. By using this technique, students can understand more of what they read, that is because every they make a question, it can help them to promote their critical thinking about what they read and by asking questions.
1.2 Identification of the Problems
Based on the background above, the researcher identifies the problems that apppear or may appear in reading comprehension. There are some factors that might cause the students’ difficulties in reading comprehension. The factors
are as follow: The students have difficulties in comprehending the idea in the reading texts.
1. The students get difficulties to understand unfamiliar vocabulary. 2. The students lack grammar use in the text.
3. The students lack interest in reading English text. 4. The students less frequently use reading technique. 5. The students less motivation use reading English text.
6. The teacher lack varifying the technique for teaching reading.
1.3 Limitation of the Problems
According to identification of problems, the researcher focuses on the use of self-questioning reading technique and to improve students’ reading achievement using descriptive text. The materials was taken from an English Textbook for Senior High School based on the School Based Curriculum (KTSP). To find out the improvement of students’ reading comprehension of
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1.4 Formulation of the Problems
In line with the limitation of the problem, the researcher addresses the following research question:
1. Is there any significant difference between the students’ reading achievement of descriptive text before and after the implementation of self-questioning strategy?
2. What are the students’ response toward the implementation of self-questioning strategy in teaching reading comprehension?
1.5 Objectives of the Research
In accordance with the formulation of research question, the researcher addresses the objective of the resarch are:
1. To investigate whether there is significant difference on students’ reading achievement of descriptive text achievement before and after giving self-questioning strategy.
2. To investigate the students’ response who are taught reading comprehension through self- questioning strategy.
1.6 Uses of the Research
Based on the objective of the research, the researcher addresses the uses of the research are as follow:
2. Practically, the result of this research hopefully can contribute to the English teachers about the effectiveness of self-questioning strategy in improving students’ reading achievement.
1.7 Definition of Terms
There are some terms used and to make it clear, the researcher gives some definitions as follow:
Descriptive text
It refers to describe a particular person, place or thing and tell about the subject by describing its features.
Reading
It refers to a process in which the reader makes sense of the written text in order to get information and knowledge from the text.
Self-questioning
II. FRAME OF THEORIES
This chapter discusses the concepts and findings which are review from previous research, and related literature, and are expected to contribute to the findings of the research.
2.1 Review of the Previous Research
Reading is defined as an active cognitive process of interacting with print and monitoring comprehension to establish the meaning (Clark and Silberstein: 1987). Reading is defined as an active cognitive process of interacting with print and monitoring comprehension to establish the meaning (Clark and Silberstein: 1987). It implies that there are many aspects that should be mastered by students to comprehend the text. In relation to the teaching of reading in the classroom, there are several studies concerning the implementation of particular technique for teaching reading.
abilities to generate questions about English passages, the use of self-questioning also promotes the development of a more learner-centred approach in EFL and assists teachers to ask questions in their classrooms that go beyond those provided in the textbooks. The findings suggest that research in self-questioning strategy needs to be expanded and continued because this study has shown the potential of the strategy to enhance students’ engagement
in learning and potentially to foster improvements in reading comprehension.
Second, Improving the reading comprehension skills of the eleventh grade of MA Nurul Jadid Paiton Probolinggo through PQRST strategy as proposed by Heriyanto (2012). The researcher found that the implementation of PQRST strategy in the teaching-learning of reading comprehension can improve the students' comprehension skill. The data of this research were obtained through (1) observation sheet (2) field notes and (3) test. Based on the findings, it is suggested that teachers use PQRST strategy as one alternative in the teaching of reading comprehension in the classroom. It can be identified that after the implementation of the action there was an improvement on the number of students who got the score of greater or equal to 75.
Based on the previous research above, the following has been found:
1. Developing teachers' and students use of self-questioning strategy in an English as a foreign language (EFL) in Indonesia.
2. The findings in self-questioning strategy has shown the potential of the strategy to enhance students’ engagement in learning and potentially to
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3. The research is designed to improve the students' reading comprehension through the use of PQRST strategy.
4. The data of this research were (1) observation sheet; (2) field notes; and (3) the test.
5. The results show that after the implementation of the action there was an improvement on the number of students who got the score of greater or equal to 75.
However, there is still one issue which has not been investigated, which has been stated in the background of the problem in Chapter 1. Therefore, this research was carried out to overcome that issue, that is, “improving students’ reading achievement through self questioning strategy by using descriptive text”.
2.2 Review of Related Literature
Considering the review of previous relevant research, the writer is going to propose a review of related literature which has a relationship with this research as follows:
2.2.1 Concept of Reading Comprehension
readers’ own background knowledge about the texts they read will have
difficulties in comprehending the text. Grabe (2009) defines reading as an interaction between reader and text and requires efficient knowledge to world and given topic also an efficient knowledge of the language. Nuttal (1982) in Simanjuntak (1988: 14) says that reading as the meaningful interpretation of printed or written verbal symbol.
Reading is important because it expands the mind, develops the imagination and helps students develop their language skills such as get new vocabularies, builds memory and better communication or language skills. Through reading, students learn about people, places and events outside their own experience. To achieve students’ reading skill, there are steps how to improve it, as follows:
a. Find something to read., eg; a children’s book, a newspaper article, and a short story.
b. Find a place to read where the students can concentrate. Maybe it will help them to enjoy their reading.
c. Begin reading by looking at the pictures, the title, or summary and the chapter or section headings. It is related what the teacher choose, she uses a text in which has many picture on it.
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e. Keep reading, that is because reading will help student in lots of ways; their vocabulary will become larger and more sophisticated and they will notice their grades change for the better in school.
There are many ways to be good at reading such as the readers should know the purpose in reading, they also should have awareness of type of the material they are reading, and kinds of learning strategies can also be used in reading that can help them in comprehending written text. It can be stated that reading is a vital skill, and reading technique are also a part of learning to read. Reading the words of a composition is one thing, but comprehension is the vital point for the reader. It is clear that in making sense of text, the reader relates new information of the text being read his previous knowledge that has stored in students’ mind.
Based on the definitions above, reading can be said as a way to fulfill the reader’s eagerness about topic they read. If the reader can read the words but
they do not understand what they read, they are not really reading. Dallman (1982).
2.2.2 Aspects of Reading
1. Identifying Main idea
Determining idea is a skill to grasp and find the main point of the passage by summarizing the passage and look for repetition of ideas or words (Kelly, R. 2004). The main idea is important to a reader because it tells what the story is mainly about. There are 3 of main ideas; to inform, to persuade, and to entertain.
2. Identifying details
Identfying details are the facts and ideas that explain or prove the topic sentence or main idea. As stated by Segretto (2002:12) that supporting details provide the reader with more information about the main idea or subject of a passage. They are pieces of information that help you see the big picture in a text. Supporting details give readers the answers to questions they might ask before they ask them.
3. Determining Inference
Inference is an educational guess or conclusion drawn based on logic of the passage. An inference is when the student take clues from a story plus what they already know from our their own experiences to decide what the teacher means. The teacher will not always tell us everything, so need to use inferences to understand and visualize the story. The students will make inferences to help them understand what they are reading. As follow:
a. Think about the type of information the teacher is giving.
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4. Understanding vocabulary
The communication will success or not it depends on the accurate vocabulary understanding It means to comprehend what the words mean is important in vocabulary. When vocabulary mastery improves, comprehension will be deeper and apply lettersound correspondence to a pretend word and matching it to a known word in the readers’ oral vocabulary. Linan et al. (2007:87) states that the role of vocabulary in reading is clearly understood: vocabulary knowledge, the understanding of word meanings and their use, contributes to reading comprehension and knowledge building.
5. Reference
One of sub process in sentence comprehension is referential representation; this process identifies the references that words in a sentence make to external word. Referential representation is aided by making referents easy to identify. Readers take less tone to identify the referents of a pronoun when the referent has been mentioned recently in the text than when it was mentioned earlier (Young, 2011:146).
2.2.3 Descriptive Text
identification used to identify phenomenon to be described and description used to mention parts, qualities, and characteristics of subject being described. The goal of the text is important to describe a particular person, places, or things. As stated by Mckay (1985: 4) when we want to describe something we must be able to make the reader understand what we mean.
Harris and Graham (2007) states that questioning are constructed about important information, rather than about unimportant details, in the descriptive text. It means that question generation allows readers to self-test their understanding of the descriptive text and helps students to identify what is important in the story. In the descriptive text, there are three parts, such as social, generic structure, and significant lexico grammatical features.
Significat Lexicogrammatical Features
1. Focus on specific participants, for examples: father, school, my dog, etc. 2. Use of simple present tense
3. Detailed noun phrase. For examples: an intellegent tall student
4. Use types of adjective that contains describing, numbering, classifying. For example: three tall buildings
5. Use relational proces, eg; my car has four doors.
6. Figurative language. For example: my throat is as dry as a dessert.
An example of descriptive text is:
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2.2.4 Personal Response
Personal response is the sixth type of comprehension in which gives readers or students an opportunity to explore their evolving thinking or something. This can be an event or another person's perspective. A personal response is important to help students “live” the text and make it their own; therefore, students need to be able to respond in a variety of ways, individually and in groups, Students who have a positive learning responses tend to be more active, creative, and willing to take every opportunity, for example in asking, giving ideas and explain to their friends if there are things that are poorly understood. Kennedy (1937) states that response expresses what readers’ experienced in reading and think about the assigned text and should reflect the background, values, and attitudes in response to the work, not what the teachers’ thinks about it”.
A response expresses what readers’ experiences in reading and think about the
assigned text. Personal responses can be found in a variety of places. A response can be a movie review, a text or letter to the editor of a newspaper or magazine, a personal conversation or a journal entry. A personal response can also be about classroom activities and discussions.
2.2.5 Self Questioning Strategy
being read. It can improve the students’ awareness and control of their thinking. Questions can promote thinking on a number of levels. As Guthrie & Anderson (1999: 68) states that students want to raise questions about literature and life, and teachers who encourage the questions will improve students’ reading achievement. Self-questioning is important at all times in reading. If students do not know or use self questioning strategy during reading, they are likely to have trouble with before and after use of the strategy.
According to Richek et al (1996: 156), activities that reading teachers should employ to help students improve reading abilities. As follow:
1. Before Reading
Teacher helps students relate background information to reading, introduce the students to the text in order to build students’ background information, gently correct misperceptions, and mention something students might enjoy or learn from the material.
2. During Reading
Teacher encourages silent reading, ask students to predict what will happen next, and encourage students to monitor their own comprehension while reading.
3. After Reading
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In self questioning allows that the learners to create their own information diagram (Franken in Nation, 1991: 58). This can be done by letting the learners to ask themselves the questions in order to get the information from the text. By generating the questions, students actively and purposefully engage in their reading and comprehending the text. This techique may help improve students’ comprehension and empower students to become active learners who are more able to learn how to guide their own learning. It can be concluded that self questioning strategy is an active process that more than just asking question.
2.2.6 Procedures of Teaching Reading through Self Questioning Strategy
Hartman (2002) proposed procedure of teaching reading through self questioning as follows:
Pre activity
1. Teacher greets students
2. Teacher checks students’ attendance list
3. Teacher asks some question related to the topic to activate their background knowledge, such as;
a. Do you have favorite star? b. Who is he/she?
c. Why do you like him/ her? d. What does he/she look like?
The steps can be described as follows: Students are shown a picture
Students must understand the questions such as “What do you study this passage for?” with self- reminder that he or she
reads the passage in order to answer the questions about its content
Students locate the main idea of the passage
For each main idea that students has highlighted, he or she
generates a questions. The students read through the passage again to answer each question that he or she has generated by using self questioning. For example, “Who is she/he?” “What does he/she look like?” “ What is the main idea of the first
paragraph?” then, students answer those questions by
paraphrasing sentences in the paragraph.
Students underline the characteristics, this helps them to make
question based on specific information in the text. Students review the questions and answer.
While Activity
1. Teacher distributes the text to all students and instructs them to write 10 questions based on the text.
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3. Students underline main idea and characteristic they found in the text and make questions, i.e “How old is she? “What does he/she look like?” What is her weight? Where is he graduated from?
4. Students write the answers on paper, exchange with their partner and answer each other.
Post activity
1. Students discuss their answer with their partner
2. After the students discuss their answers of their questions, the teacher administers questions and discusses it with the students.
3. The students are given homework structured form about famous person or an idol as the evaluation by the teacher
2.3 Advantages of Self Questioning Strategy and Disadvantages of Self Questioning Strategy
The research believes that there are some advantages and disadvantages to self-questioning.
Advantages of Self Questioning Strategy
1. A student does not have to constantly rely on the teacher to gain understanding of a subject. It is a good way to take learning into your own hands.
2. The strategy allows students to test each other.
4. Another advantage of self-questioning is that it can be used in all academic subjects.
Disadvantages of Self Questioning Strategy
1. If students do not know what questions are best to ask, then they will not gain the correct or necessary information that can prove that they actually learn the material.
2. Students do not pay attention to meaning of the structure.
2.4 Theoretical Assumption
The use of question in teaching reading is to provide purpose, elicit and focus discussion and to check. Nuttal (1987) says that developing types of question and techniques for them are essential to teach reading. It means that the teacher in teaching reading is suggested to use question to help students comprehend the text.
Based on the frame of theories, the researcher use self-questioning strategy to improve their reading comprehension achievement because the researcher assumes that self-questioning is useful for increasing students’ better. Its main goal is to develop the students’ metacognitive skills. Hence, the writer
assumes that self-questioning is an effective strategy that may activate students’ prior knowledge during reading, develop metacognition and
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2.5 Hypothesis
Referring to the related literature presented earlier, the writer states the hypothesis as follow:
H0 : There is no significance difference on students’ reading achievement by using self-questioning strategy using descriptive text.
H1 : There is significance difference on students’ reading achievement by using descriptive text.
III. RESEARCH METHODS
This chapter describes the method that is used in conducting the data of the research such as research design, population and sample of the research, research instruments, validity and reliability of the instrument, research procedure, data analysis, and hypothesis testing.
3.1 Research Design
This research used a quantitative because it was very useful for providing factors connected with second language development. Setiyadi (2006:5) cites that quantitative design aims to investigate a theory has been existed and the data in order to support or reject it.
In conducting the research, the researcher applied One Group Pretest-Posttest design. One group pretest-posttest design is a research design where one group of
participants is pretested on the dependent variable and then posttested after the treatment condition has been administered. Pre test was given to the students in order to measure the students’ competence before they were given the treatment
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were given the treatment. In this design, it showed that the difference between the pretest and posttest scores. The research design could be represented as follow:
Tl X T2 Where:
T1 : pre-test T2 : post-test
X : treatment (using Self Questioning Strategy)
(Hatch and Farhady (1982: 24)
3.2 Population and Sample of the Research
A population could be defined as the whole subjects of the research. Setiyadi (2006:38) states research population is all individuals which are being target in research while research sample is individual who give the data. The population in this research was the first grade of SMAN 5 Bandar Lampung in the academic year of 2012/2013. There were seven classes of the first grade (X1-X7). Their age rate is 17 years old and come from different family background. This research employed two classes; the first class as try out class was X-4 and the second class as the experimental class was X-1. The researcher applied the classes by using random sampling.
3.3 Variables
investigate and the dependent variable was the variable that the researcher observed and measured to determine the improvement of the independent variable. The research consists of the following variables:
1. Students’ reading comprehension achievement as dependent variable (Y). 2. Self-questioning as independent variable (X).
3.4 Research Instrument
The instrument of this research is reading text. the researcher adminestered a pre test, treatments and post test. Then, the data analyzed from the result of those three activities which could be clarified as follows:
1. Pretest
Pretest was conducted in order to find out the students’ reading comprehension achievement before the treatments. This test was multiple choice in which the students were asked to choose one correct answer from the options a, b, c, or d. In this test students were given 30 items of reading and it was conducted within 60 minutes.
2. Posttest
After conducting the treatments, the post test was administered. It was done in order to know the students’ achievement after applying the treatments. This
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If the scores are about the same, or if the post-test score is lower than the pre-test score, may the indications the measures that topics were not learned in the teaching learning.
3. Questionnaire
The questionnaire was conducted in order to investigate the students’ response in reading comprehension of descriptive text using self-questioning. The questionnaire consists of 8 statements that related to the aspects of reading (main idea, supporting details, inference, reference and vocabulary). Each item provided four options; completely agree (4), agree (3), disagree (2), totally disagree (1). The questionnaire can be seen in Appendix 22.
3.5 Research Procedures
The procedures of this research were:
1. Determining Research problem
The problem of this research was determined based on the pre observation which was conducted in SMAN 5 Bandar Lampung. The research problem can be seen in the background in Chapter 1.
2. Determining the Research Instrument
and each item had four alternative answers a, b, c, or d. one correct answer and three distracters. In addition, the questionnaire was carried out in order to know the students’ response toward self questioning of descriptive text. The
questionnaire consists of 8 statements or questions about reading comprehension and self questioning.
3. Selecting and Determining the Materials
The materials of this research were based on the School Based Curriculum (KTSP) 2006 for the first grade students. Besides, the materials were added and searched from network. Based on the discussion in Chapter 1, descriptive text was chosen as as the focus. The result of the try out were analyzed in order to know which the items are good to be used in pretest.
4. Administering the try out
This test was administered to measure the level of difficulty (LD) and discrimination power (DP) in order to find out the reliability and validity of the test. The items of the test were 40 and it was allocated within 80 minutes. The test was administered to measure the quality of the test as the instrument of the research.
5. Administering pre-test
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6. Conducting treatments
In this research, the treatment was conducted in three meeting which took 2 x 45 minutes. The lessons plan consisted of three different topics. The students has given the different assignments for each session, they are structured assignment and unstructured assignment. The text or the material were taken from students' English book and internet for first grades. The materials was about descriptive text
7. Administering post-test
The aim of this test was to measure the students' reading comprehension achievement after giving treatments. The test was conducted in 60 minutes with 30 items of multiple-choice reading test.
8. Administering the questionnaire
The questionnaire was given for the students in order to investigate the students’ response in learning reading comprehension of descriptive text in
applying self-questioning technique.
9. Analyzing test data and testing hypothesis
After scoring student's work, the data were analyzed by using T-test to compare the data of two mean scores (Hatch and Farhady, 1982: 108).
3.6 The Results of Try Out of the Instruments
test and also the reliability of the test, validity of the test. The test was conducted at the first grade students of SMAN 5 Bandar Lampung on April 29th until May 18th 2013. There were seven classes of the first grade of students and this research employed two classes; the first class as try out class was X-4 and the second class as the experimental class was X-1.
3.7 The Try Out of Instrument
There were four criteria of good test, namely, validity, reliability, level of difficulty, and discrimination power.
3.7.1 Validity
Validity refers to the extent to which the test measures what was intended to measure. There are two basic types of validity; content validity and construct validity (Hatch and Farhady, 1982:250). A test can be considered to be valid if it can precisely measure the quality of the test.
There are four kinds of validity that are:
1. face validity, concerns with the lay out of the test;
2. content validity, depends on a careful analysis of the language being stated;
3. construct validity; measures certain specific characteristic in accordance with a theory of language learning;
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According to the types of validity above, the writer also used content and construct validity. Both of them were explained as follows:
a. Content Validity
Content validity is intended to know whether the test items are good reflection of what will be covered. The test items are adapted from the materials that have been taught to the students should be constructed as to contain a representative sample of the course. (Heaton,1988). To get the content validity of reading comprehension, the researcher tried to arrange the materials based on the standard competence in syllabus for second grade of senior high school students that is students are able to construct meaning of functional text. In order to establish the content validity of a measuring instrument, the researcher identify the overall content to be represented. By using this method the teacher should obtain a group of items which is representative of the content of the trait or property to be measured.
The content of the try out was presented in table of specification below: Table 1. Reading Specification (Aspects of Reading)
No. Reading Skills Items Number of Pre
Test
Items Number of Post Test
1. Identifying main idea 1,5,8,16,21,28,30 1,5,9,16,23,27
2. Identifying details 3,6,9,13,17,19,26 2,6,14,17,24
3. Making inference 11,15,22,24,29 4,10,12,25,29
4. Understanding vocabulary 2,7,10,12,15,23 3,13,14,18,22,28
5. Reference 4,10,14,22,18,27 8,11,19,26,30
Total 30 items 30 items
See on p.13
b. Construct Validity
Construct validity concerns whether the tests are true reflection in line with the theory of what it means to know the language (Shohamy, 1985:74). If a test has construct validity, it is capable of measuring certain specific characteristics in accordance with a theory of language behaviour and learning. This type of validity assumes the existence of certain learning theories or constructs underlying the acquisition of abilities and skills (Heaton, 1988:161).
3.7.2 Reliability
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extent to which a test produce consistent results when administered under similar condition (Hatch and Farhady.1982:244).
The test was determined by using Pearson Product Moment which measures the correlation coefficient of the reliability between odd and even number (reliability of half test) in the following formula:
r
xy=
where:
rxy : coefficient of reliability between odd and even numbers items x : odd number
y : even number ∑x2
: total score of odd number items ∑y2
: total score of even number items ∑xy : total score of odd and even number
After getting the reliability of half test, the researcher used “Spearman Bown’s Prophecy formula” (Hatch and Farhady,1982; 247) to determine the reliability of
the whole tests, as follows:
r
k=
where:
r
k : the reliability of the whole testsr
xy : the reliability of half test(Hatch and Farhady, 1982:247) The criteria of reliability as follows:
After the data were analyzed, the result showed that the reliability of half test (rxy) was 0.952 and reliability of the whole test (rk) is 0.975 (see Appendix 5).
Based on the criteria of reliability of the test, it can be stated that the tests have a high reliability since the range of the high criteria for the reliability test is 0.8 – 1.00 (Hatch and Farhady, 1982: 246). It can be interpreted that the test can be used as an instrument to collect the data of the research. In other word, the test is reliable.
3.7.3 Level of Difficulty
Level of difficulty relates to how easy of difficult the item is from the point of view of the students who took the test. It is important since test items which are too easy (that all students get right) can tell us nothing about differences within the test population (Shohamy, 1985:79).
Moreover, the difficulty level of an item shows how easy or difficult that particular item done by the participants Heaton (1975:182). The students were divided into two group that were upper and lower groups. The students’ scores of try out was listed from the highest score to the lowest score. It was calculated by the following formula:
LD
=
Where:
LD : level of difficulty
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The criteria are as follows: < 0.03 : difficult 0.03 – 0.70 : average > 0.70 : easy
(Shohamy, 1985: 79)
Based on the result of try out related to the criteria, these test consisted of 5 difficult items (12, 15, 33, 35, 39), 26 good items (1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 36, 40) and 9 easy items (4,5, 7, 8, 18, 23, 29,37,38). The easy and difficult items were not used to collect the data and should be revised or dropped from the test. Then, the average items were administered in pretest and post test. For discrimination power, it was found that there were 7 poor items (1, 2, 3, 15, 20, 32, 39), 16 satisfactory items (7, 10, 13, 14, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 26, 29, 30, 34, 36, 37, 38) and 17 good items (4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 16, 17, 22, 25, 27, 28, 31, 33, 35, 40) (Appendix 3).
3.7.4 Discrimination Power
Discrimination power refers to the extent to which the items were able to differentiate between high and low level students on that test. Discrimination power used to differentiate between the students who have high ability and those who have low ability.
The formula are :
Notes:
D : discrimination power
U : the number of students from the upper who answer correctly L : the number of students from the lower who answer correctly N : the number of the students
(Shohamy, 1985:82)
The criteria of discrimination power are: 0.00 – 0.20 : Poor
0.21 – 0.40 : Satisfactory 0.41 – 0.70 : Good 0.70 – 1.00 : Excellent
- (negative) : Bad items (should be omitted)
From the computation of discrimination power of try out, it was found that there were 10 items (5, 7, 15, 17, 22, 23, 29, 31, 33 and 35) belong to bad items (has less than 2.00 index) Then, there were 28 items were satisfactory (1, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39 and 40) and the rest items (items number 2, 6, 20, 26 and 32) included in good discrimination power (see Appendix 3).
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3.8 Scoring System
To get the score of the students’ result of the test, this research employ Lyman’s
formula. The ideal highest score is 100. The score of prestest and postest will be calculated by using the following formula:
X%
c
= TR 100
Where:
X%c = percentage of correct score
R = number of right answer T = total number of items on test(Lyman, 1971: 95)
3.9 Data Analysis
In order to know the students’ progress in comprehending the text and the students’ score were computed by doing three activities:
1. Scoring the pretest and posttest
2. Tabulating the result of the test and calculating the mean of pretest and the posttest.
The mean was calculated by applaying the following formula:
3. Drawing conclusion from the tabulated results of the test given, that was by statistically analyzing the data using statistical computerization i.e Paired T-Test of Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) to test wheter the increase of students’ gain was significant or not, in which the significance
was determine by p < 0.05. It was used as the data from one sample. (Hatch and Farhady,1982: 117). In order to know whether the students got any progress, the formula was as follow:
I =
-
Notes:
I = the increase of students’ reading comprehension achievement
= the average score of post test
= the average score of pre test
3.10 Hypothesis Test
38
The hypothesis are drawn as follows:
H0 : There is no significance diferrence on students’ reading achievement by using self-questioning strategy of descriptive text.
H1 : There is significance diferrence on students’ reading achievement by using self-questioning strategy of descriptive text.
(Hatch and Farhady, 1982:111) The criteria for accepting the hypothesis are as follows:
V. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
This chapter covers the conclusion and suggestion based on the finding and discussion of the data analysis.
5.1 Conclusions
In line with the results of the data analysis and discussion, the writer comes to this following conclusion:
1. There is significant difference on students’ reading achievement before and after being taught through self questioning strategy, This could be identified from the gain score and the computation of t-test. The test shows that the mean score of post test get higher than pre test, it shows that there is difference of students’ reading achievement with the gain 15.15 points and
t-ratio is higher than t-table (18.485> 2.042) and the significant value is lower than level of significance (0.00 < 0.05).
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5.2 Suggestions
Referring to the conclusion above, some suggestions can be listed as follows:
1. Suggestions to the teacher.
a. English teacher are recommended to apply self questioning strategy as alternative technique in teaching reading using descriptive text because it can help the students in comprehending the text easier. In addition, it can be used to increase the students’ reading achievement and it can be used
guide the students to be more crticical in terms of making good questions related to the text based on the clues given.
b. In self questioning, when the teacher implement it, all students should generate their own questions. It must be emphasized that the structure of students’ questions is not the main point. The points is the question itself.
The teacher must train the students how to make good questions. The teacher should choose appropriate material based on the students’ level because self questioning technique will work if the students have background knowledge about the text.
c. Then, teacher should control the students’ activities and consider the time allocation when implement self questioning technique, because it may affect the efficacy of the strategy itself.
2. Suggestions to further researchers
a. In this research, the researcher apply self questioning strategy to increase the students’ reading achievement using descriptive text at first grade students of Senior High School. Other researchers can conduct other kinds of text, i.e exposition, recount, narative, report text.
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