THE EFFECT OF CONCEPT MAPPING STRATEGY ON
STUDENTS’
READING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT
IN DESCRIPTIVE TEXT
A THESIS
Submitted to the English Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Medan, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of Sarjana Pendidikan
By:
BURA KHAIRA
Registration Number 2101121007
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ARTS
STATE UNIVERSITY OF MEDAN
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First of all the writer would like to express her praises to Allah SWT and his prophet Muhammad SAW because of their and blessing and great love, the writer could do and finally complete this thesis.
This thesis is aimed to fulfill one of the requirements for the degree of Sarjana Pendidikan (S-1) at the English Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Medan.
During the process of writing, the writer realizes that she can not accomplish without God blessings and supporting from many people, therefore the writer would like to express her sincere gratitude to:
1. Prof. Dr. Ibnu Hajar Damanik, M.Si., the Rector of State University of Department, Dra. Meisuri, MA., the Head of English Non-Educational Program and Dra. Masitowarni Siregar, M.Ed., the Head of English Education Program, Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Medan.
4. The writer expresses her special thanks to Drs. Bachtiar, M.Pd., as her thesis supervisor.
5. The writer sincerely thanks to her father, Harwan and her mother, Kamsiah for never giving up on her and for their tireless pray and love. The writer’s special gratitude also goes to her dearest brother for being so honest and relieving and her sisters, who always keep the writer on the right way and cover her with so much love and caring.
6. Special Thanks to writer’s Aunt, Sutrisnawati and her children, who sincerely feed her and give her a shelter whenever she need it also for all family members who supported her.
7. The Headmaster of SMP Swasta Al- Washliyah Medan, his permission and opportunities in allowing the writer to do observation and to collect data.
8. Her best friends, PutYong, Andri, Nangin, and Evi.
9. Special thanks to her beloved friends, students of English Department, especially ReAction, PPLT SMK NEGERI 1 TANJUNG PURA 2013, notably for Novayanti Pratiwi, and all people that can not be mentioned one by one for their care, support, pray and love. May all the assistance, support and simplicity given by all of the people can be their charity and got merit from Allah SWT.
Medan, September 2014 The Writer
i
ABSTRACT
Khaira, Bura. 2101121007. The Effect of Concept Mapping Strategy on Students’ Reading Comprehension Achievement in Descriptive Text. A Thesis: English Department. Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Medan. 2014.
This study deals with the effect of Concept Mapping strategy on students’ reading comprehension achievement in descriptive text. This study is inspired by the problem that students’ faced at the school in terms of reading skill. This study was conducted by using experimental design to examine the effect of Concept Mapping strategy on students’ reading comprehension achievement in descriptive text. The subject of the study was the eighth grader in the first semester at SMP SWASTA Al- Washliyah Medan. They were chosen as the sample by applying random sampling. They were 64 students which is divided into two groups. Experimental group was taught by applying Concept Mapping strategy while the control group was taught by applying KWL chart strategy. The data of this research were taken from the students’ score of reading test. Based on the calculation showed that the coefficient of the test was 0.9, it shows that the test is highly reliable. There were two data used in this research. They were pre-test and post-test. The data were analyzed by using t-test formula to show the effect of Concept Mapping strategy on students’ reading comprehension achievement in descriptive text. After analyzing the data, the finding indicates that t-observed was higher than t-table (2.8 > 2.000) at the level significant 0.05 with the degree of freedom (df) 58. It means that the hypothesis, there is significant effect of Concept Mapping Strategy on students’ reading comprehension achievement in descriptive text is accepted.
iii A. The Background of the Study... 1
B. Problem of the Study... 5
C. The scope of the Study... 5
D. The Objective of the Study... 6
E. The Significance of the Study... 6
CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE A. TheoreticalFramework... 7
1. Definition of Reading... 7
2. Levels of Reading Comprehension... 12
3. Readers’ and Texts’ Roles in Comprehension... 13
4. Assesment of Reading Comprehension... 14
5. Reading Comprehension, Skill, and Strategy... 15
6. Teaching Reading Comprehension... 17
7. Concept Mapping... 18
8. KWL Chart... 23
9. Teaching Reading Based Genre... 25
10. Teaching Concept Map in Descriptive Text... 29
11. Students’ Achievement... 30
B. Conceptual Framework... 32
C. Hypothesis... 32
CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY A. Research Design... 33
iv
1. Population... 33
2. Sample... 34
C. The Instrument of Collecting Data... 34
D. The Procedures of the Research... 34
1. Pre – test... 35
2. Treatment... 35
3. Post – test ... 37
E. Scoring System... 37
F. The Validity and Reliability of the Test... 37
G. Technique of Data Analysis... 39
CHAPTER IV DATA ANALYSIS AND RESEARCH FINDINGS A. Data Analysis... 41
1. Testing Reliability of the Test... 41
2. Analyzing the Data by Using T-Test... 42
3. Testing Hypothesis... 42
B. Research Findings... 43
C. Discussion... 44
CHAPTER V CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION A. Conclusion... 45
B. Suggestion... 46
REFERENCES... 47
v
LIST OF TABLES
Page
Table 1.1. Students’ Reading Comprehension Score... 2
Table 2.1. Overview of the Comprehension Factors... 13
Table 3.1. Research Design... 33
Table 3.2. Teaching Procedure... 35
vii
LIST OF FIGURES
Pages
1
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. The Background of the Study
Learning english engages various language skills which lead students
to be a versatile learner. There are four skills that must be achived by students,
they are listening, reading, speaking, and writing. Among the four language
skills, reading is one of the most essential skills to develop. This statement is
asserted by Rob and Susser “ Reading is the most emphasized language skill
in a traditional foreign language teaching” (1990).
In the digital world where information is easily accessed, the ability to
read is important. According to Chang (2002), many EFL students may not
need to speak English in their daily lives but they need to have a good reading
comprehension because there are so many accessible informations written in
English.
Being aware of how important reading is for the students, the job of
language teachers is to develop and improve their ability in reading
comprehension. To be able to reach this goal, language teachers should always
try to make their reading lessons effective by applying the most suitable
strategy in accordance with the theories ( Bilokcuoglu, 2012 : 1 ).
Unfortunately, there are still many students who have limitation in
learning English. Based on writer’s observation and preliminary research of
2
of the students were able to achieve the standard score of Minimum Standard
Competence (KKM) of reading comprehension test. The standard score of KKM was 70.
From 32 students, it found that there were 8 students who did not pass the Minimum
Standard Competence (KKM) and the amount were increase in the second semester into
10 students. The following table shows the recapitulation of students score during the
students Percentage Mean Score 1st semester
Specifically, students also found difficulties in reading comprehension. They
found difficulties to extract the idea and informations included in a text. They often
focused on a long written text and read the text repeatedly to find the key concepts. It
made students trapped in boredom and even frustration. They did not know how to
find the purpose of their reading. Written text is hard to remember and it forces
students to read it again and again to find an information. The problems are caused
by the teacher who did not encourage them to activate their prior knowledge in pre-
reading activity.
Furthermore, teachers mostly used traditional teaching method, without
applying any strategy to overcome students’ problem in reading. In addition, they did
not teach genre to students. Whereas genre is important for readers. In Indonesia
itself, government has regulated a genre based – teaching. As cited by Depdiknas
(2006) that students must be able to communicate both in written or orally based on
3
students to figure out the purpose of a written text by scoping writer’s intention
through communicative purpose.
Teachers believed that teaching by using traditional method is enough. In fact,
students need a renewed strategy to present a more interesting way of reading and
such a traditional teaching can not afford their needs.
Grabe (2002) claims that reading requires efficient knowledge of world and a
given topic also an efficient knowledge of the language. As it is stated, reading
requires a rich background, and also some ability to comprehend the texts. Research
by Afflerbach (1990) found that readers who had a well-developed knowledge base
are more likely to have a strong ability to recall relevant information. Background
knowledge helps students to interpret reading materials in an individual way. Thus, it
is important that teachers teach students how to use their own background knowledge
as a strategy for comprehending text.
The statement is also asserted by cognitive psychologists who believed that all of
a person’s prior knowledge was stored in the cognitive structures of the brain.
Therefore, in order to acquisition of new knowledge to take place and to be
meaningful, prior knowledge or schema needed to be activated within these structures
by means of an introductory instructional strategy (Ausubel, cited in Daniel 2005).
Thus, Ausubel (1960) developed the new strategy that he termed advance organizers.
Advance organizer can take various shape such as outlines, timelines, charts,
diagrams, and concept maps (Anderson, Yilmaz, 2004)
Concept maps are diagrams that represent organized knowledge (Novak & Gowin,
1984). Concept maps can be used as a knowledge representation tool to reflect
relationships that exist between concepts that reside within an individual’s long-term
4
connector to link students’ prior knowledge with new informations from the text they
just read. Elorriaga in Abu Nada (2008) stated that in recent years it has become
apparent to many educational researchers that representing knowledge in a visual
format allows one to better recognize and understand incoming information. It is
easier for the brain to interpret data when information is presented in visual formats;
visual symbols are quickly and easily recognized. Using concept maps in learning
process, including a strategy to accompanied with. The strategy encourage student to
present their existing prior knowledge. It provides pre – reading activity which allow
students to draw some words related to the topic will be discussed in shape of box
according to their prior knowledge. After the students read the text they can also draw
the new words according to the new informations they got and relate them to the
previous words. They will comprehend the new information by comparing it with the
existing knowledge in visual format.
This strategy is expected to lead students becoming critical thinker and avoid
boredom in class. Furthermore, it provides an interesting learning to help teachers
creating a meaningful learning for students and improving students’ reading
comprehension.
Those findings motivated writer to conduct a research to find out the effect of
implementing concept mapping strategy in teaching reading comprehension to bring
about better outcomes in students’ reading comprehension achievement.
B. Problem of the Study
The problem of the study is stated as following :
“Is there any significant effect of Concept Mapping strategy on the students’ reading
5
C. The Scope of the Study
Based on Depdiknas regulation about genre based teaching, the type of the text is
limited into descriptive text. Concept mapping as strategy of reading comprehension also
use concept map as media in teaching. This study will be focused on identifying the effect
of using concept mapping strategy on students reading descriptive text comprehension
achievement.
D. The Objective of the Study
The objective of this study is to find out the significant effect of applying concept
mapping strategy on students’ comprehension achievement in reading descriptive text.
E. The Significance of the Study
The finding of this study is expected will be useful for :
1. The teachers as the reference to improve their informations about learning
strategies which can be applied to increase the quality of teaching process.
2. The students in improving their reading comprehension in descriptive text by
using concept mapping.
3. Other researchers, who are interested in doing related research as the reference of
45
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
A. Conclusion
Based on research findings, the writer concludes that there is a significant
effect of Concept Mapping strategy in students’ reading comprehension
achievement on descriptive text. This strategy is proved statistically as an
effective strategy because it gives better result than KWL strategy. As can be
seen from the data, the mean score of Post - Test in experimental group is
higher than that the mean score of Post – Test of control group. In addition,
the calculation of T-test shows that the t-obs (2.8) is higher than the t-table
(2.001). It means applying concept mapping strategy in classroom gives better
outcomes to students and significantly affects students’ achievement in
reading comprehension.
Reading teachers could provide students a visual representation to help
students comprehending the reading material and improve their reading
achievement. Therefore, this study proved that teaching reading by applying
Concept Mapping strategy was more effective than teaching reading by
46
B. Suggestion
Based on the conclusion above, some suggestions are offered as follows :
1. English teacher had better apply Concept Mapping strategy in
teaching reading comprehension because it has been proved that the
strategy gave the better outcome to students’ achievement.
2. Students should use concept map to help them extracting the
information of a text.
3. For better result, the future researcher had better involve more
47
REFERENCES
Afflerbach, P.P. 1990. The influence of prior knowledge and text genre on
readers’ prediction strategies. Journal of reading behavior (Chicago, IL), vol. 22, no. 2, p. 131–48.
Ahlberg , M and , Vukko , A. ( 2004 ) : Six Years Of Design Experiments Using Concept Mapping At The Beginning Of The End Of Each Of Learning
Projects .From:http://cmc.ihmc.us/CMC2004Programa.html
Asan , A ( 2007 ) : Concept Mapping In Science Class : A Case Study Of Fifth
Grade Students , Educational Technology And Society ,Vol (10 ) , No (1 )
Atherton, J.S. 2005. Learning and Teaching :Cognitive Dissonance and Learning. Retrieved from : http: //learningandteaching.info.htm//
Bilokcuoglu, Hasan. Theories of reading and their implications to the teaching of reading in esl/efl classes & the place of schemata theory on foreign. Pp. 1 – 18. Retrieved from : http://www.englishedulab.com. Accesed on January 31th, 2014.
Cañas, Alberto J. 2003. A Summary of Literature Pertaining to the Use of Concept Mapping Techniques and Technologies for Education and Performance
Support. Switzerland : The Institute for Human and Machine Cognition
Pensacola. Retrieved from : http://www.ihmc.us. Accesed on April 06th, 2014.
Chang, Kuo En, Yao Ting Sung, et.al. 2002. The Effect of Concept Mapping to
Enhance Text Comprehension and Summarization, 5 – 23. National
Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan. Accesed on May 1st, 2014. Daniel, Joan Kathy. Advance organizers: Activating and Building Schema for
more Successful learning in students with disabilities. 2005. Lynchburg
College, 3- 14. Accesed on March, 26th. 2014
Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan. 2013. Silabus 2013 untuk SMP. Jakarta. Depdikbud
De Cecco, John P., and Crawford, William R. 1974. The Psychology of Learning
and Instruction. Educational Psychology. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.,
EnglewoodCliffs.
Dole, J. A., Brown, K. J., Trathen, W. (1996). The effects of strategy Instruction on the comprehension performance of At-Risk students. Journal of
Reading Research Quarterly, 31 (1), 62-88.http://dx.doi.org/10.1598/RRQ
48
maps,conceptualdiagrams, and visual metaphors as complementary tools
for knowledge construction and sharing. Faculty of Communication
Sciences, University of Lugano (USI), Lugano, Switzerland : 202 – 210. Grabe, W and Stoler, F.L. 2002. The Practice of ELT (3rd edition). Harlow :
Pearson Education limited.
Mullis, I.V.S., Kennedy, A.M., Martin, M.O., & Sainsbury, M. (2006). PIRLS
2006 assessment framework and specifications, (2nd ed.). Chestnut Hill,
MA: Boston College .
Nada, Mazen Khalil. 2008. The Effect Of Using Concept Map s On Achieving
EnglishGrammar Among Ninth Graders In Gaza Governorate. The
Islamic university Gaza, Gaza : 20 – 203.
Novak,J., and Gowin, D.B. 1984. Learning How to Learn.New York : Cambridge University Press.
Otto,W.,Rude R.,and Spiegel,D.L. 1979. How to Teach Reading. Canada : additional Wesley Publisher.
Patel, Dr.M.F, and Jain, P.M. 2001. English Language Teaching:Methods,Tools,
and Techniques. Jaipur: Sunrise Publisher and Distributor.
Phantharakphong, Phatchara and Suteera Pothitha. 2013. Development of English
Reading Comprehension by Using Concept Maps.Thailand : Procedia -
Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 ( 2014 ) 497 – 501. Retrived from : www.sciencedirect.com
Tinambunan, Wilmar. 1988. Evaluation of Student Achievement. Jakarta:Depdikbud.
Turner. 1988. Technology for Teaching and Assesing Reading. Australia : University of New South Wales
Vaezi, Shahin, Ph.D. 2006. Theories of Reading.Iranian Language Institute Teaching Journal.Vol 1. Retrived from :
www.teachingreading/readingtheories.com
