THE EFFECT OF DIRECTED READING-THINKING ACTIVITY (DRTA) AND CONTEXT CLUES METHODS ON READING COMPREHENSION.

z

?

m

P res e,.~tei.: ~o

The

State

University of Medan

!n partial

fu!fiHm~n t

of the requirements

for the

de gr~e

of

Magister

Humanior.a

in Engi$sh

s.pfi'li ~d

linguistics

~l KAD

VA

TE

PROGRAM

bTBi

- 0 '1 '-11 c

·OF ENGLISH

APPLIED

LINGUISTICS

THE STATE

IJA IVERSI'IY

OF MED.M

(llNIMED)

z

THESIS

THE EFFECT OF

DIRECTED READING-THINKING ACTIVI1Y (DRTA)

AND CONTEXT CLUES METHODS

ON READING COMPREHE.NSIO.N

Arranged by:

MERYSYSKA SITUMORANG

Registration number: 025010079

Has been defended before Thesis

Examination Committee, on July 28

1

h.

2005.

And declared to have fulfilled the requirement.

Approved

by

Consultant Commission:

Consultant

If

Prof.

1\1.

Silitonga, M:*., Ph.f)

Prof. Tina Mariany Arifin, M.A., P.h.D

Head of English Applied Linguistics

Prof.Dr. Jawasi Naibaho

Director of Graduate program

UNIMED

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This study is concerned with the effect of Directed Reading-Thinking Activity

(DRTA) and Context Clues on Reading Comprehension. It is submitted to the Graduate

Program of the State University of Medan, in partial fulfillment of the final academic

requirements to obtain the degree of Magister of Hwnaniora from English Applied

Linguistics.

First of all, Praise to God The "Almighty" for His mercy and beneficial, without

His guidance and blessing she would have never been able to complete her the~ is. She also

expresses his sincere gratitude to Prof. M. SiJitonga, Ph.D and Prof. T ina Mariany

.Kariman, M.A., Ph.D as her consultants for their valuable inputs, guidance. and

encouragements to broaden her perception and knowledge on tl1e topic.

She also gives her appreciation to the reviewers for their const:p.Jctive

suggestions, criticism s and questions in the process of making this thesis. Her great

gratitude is also due to Prof. Dr. Jawasi Naibaho and Dra. Meisuri, M.A as Head and

Secretary of the English Applied Linguistics Program, for their motivation and assistance

during her study and in conducting this research, as well as to all the lecturers wlio guided

her throughout her academic years at the Graduate Program in UNJMED.

The writer's sincerest thanks goes to her beloved parents J. Situmor ang and S.

br. Tampubolon who patiently give tlteir moral and financial supports, never-ending love

and prayers. Next. she wants to express her thanks to all her sisters and brother Joy,

Erika, Samuel and Rahd Situmoraag fm; their moral and spiritual supports.

Her thankfullness goes also to her executive class (B'Indah, Azizab, Charles,

Maria, Susanto, Wilda, Ira, and Suaibatun) for their encouragements and togetherness

during the process of writing this thesis. All of her fiiends at

Methodist Hang Tuab

Church, should also share the writer's appreciation for their motivation.

Finally, the wtiter realizes that tllis

thesis

is still far

from

being perfect.

Therefore constructive

criticism and

suggestions

are welcomed

for

further

improvement of

this

thesis.

iii

Medan, July 2005.

l11e

writer,

Merysyska Situmoran2

ABSTRACT

}

\

Situmorang, Merysyska. 2005.

The

Effect

of Directed Reading-Thinking

Activity DRTA) and Context Clues on Reading Comprehension.

English Applied Linguistics, Graduate Program of the Sate University

ofMedan.

There are many problems faced by teachers in teaching reading comprehension to

the students. It's not an easy task to make the students comprehend the reading

material in a given time. The problems is because most teachers are not aware of

this and they are not motivated to find the applicable method/s to be applied in the

teaching. Related to this, the writer conducted a research on the effect of teaching

methods on reading comprehension. The objectives of this study are to investigate

whether Directed Readi.ng-Thinking Activity (DRTA) and Context Clues

significantly affect on reading comprehension, and which of these methods is the

most significantly effective. Quantitative approach was carried in experimental

design. The samples was taken from the second year students from Methodist

Tanjung Morawa who were in the 2004/2005 school year. The Cluster sampling

was used with 105 students who were divided into three groups (two experimental

groups and one control group).

In the process of collecting the data, first the

researcher administrated a pre-test for the three groups, then two groups were

treated with DRTA and Context clues methods, and one group was taught using

traditional method. After the treatments, the

post~test

was administrated to tHe three

groups. For the analysis, the data were analyzed applying One Way-ANOV

A

The

result of the anatysis showed that the F observed is greater than the F table

(9.64>3.09). Further more, to prove which group was the most effective method,

the

NEWMAN~KEULS

fonnula was applied and the result showed that from the

two experimental groups DRTA was the most effective method in teaching reading

comprehension (mean=60.80), followed by Context Clues method (mean=59.25).

In &eneral,

it is concluded that the DRTA method and Context Clues method give

TABLE OF

CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT ... ...

i

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the Study ... .. .... ... ... 1

1.2 Research Problem ... .... ... 3

1.3 Objective of the Study ... 3

1.4 Hypothesis ... ... ...

.4

1.5 Significance of the Study ... ...

.4

1.6 Scope of the Study ... ...

.5

CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE 2.1 Reading ... ... 7

2.2

z

~

2.3 2.4 The Levels of Reading ... .. 9

2.2.1 Independent Level ... .... 9

2.2.2 Instructional Level ... ... 9

2.2.3 Frustration Level ... 9

Comprehension ... 10

2.3 1 Taxonomic Levels of Comprehension .. ... 10

Reading Comprehension ... 12

m

2.5 2.6 Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DRT A) ... 13

Steps in DRTA ... ... 15

2.6.1 Predicting ... 15

2.6.2 Reading ... 16

2.6.3 Proving ... ... ... ... 17

2.1

Context Clues . . . .. . .. . . .. . . .. .... 18

2.7.1 Types of Context Clues .. .... ... ... 19

RESEARCH METHOD 3.1 Research Design .. . ... 23

3.2 Population and Sample ... 23

3.3 rnstrument.. ... 24

CHAPTER IV:

CHAPTER

V:

3.3.1 Validity ... 24

3.3.2 Reliability ... 25

3.4

Procedures of Data Collection ... 25

3.4.1 Pre-Test ...

26

3.4.2 Treatments ...

26

3.4.3 Post-Test ...

26

3.5 Data Analysis ...

27

DATAANALYSISANDRESEARCH

FINDINGS

4. 1

Data Analysis ... .. .. .. .. ... .. ....

~

... 28

4.1.1

The Effect of Teaching Methods ... ...

28

4.2

Testing of the Hypothesis ... ... ... ... ... 37

4.2.1

Hypothesis One: Teaching methods with

DRTA and Context Clues significantly

affect Reading Comprehension ... ... ... 37

4.2.2

Hypothesis Two:The Most Significant

·Method ... ... ...

38

4.3

Research Findings ... ..

~. ~ .3 9

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

5.1

Conclusions ... ...

AO

5.2

Suggestions ... .40

1.1

CHAPTER I

.INTRODUCTION

Background of the study

I

MIUK PERPUST

AKA

AN {

f

UNIM~

Langua ~e is a mediwn of communication, and the fundamental function of a

language is communication. LanJ.,ruage is needed to make sense of the world we Jive in.

By putting words to what is seen, felt and heard, a new experience can be understood.

Language enables people not only to talk about and ac;;k

tor

the things, but also to think and

plan. regulate the behavior, and express the emotion. There is no human community

without language, and a good and strong community needs a good infonnation s~ stem.

There are four skills to be mastered in the study of a language, namely listening,

speaking, reading, and writing. From all these aspects, reading is the most complex

commw1ication process which requires effort, concentration, and attention. People read to

gain infonnation. Nowadays, scientific and Infonnation Teclmology (IT) written-in

English and it is available in large number of media To get access to such infonnation,

people need to be able to read and tu1derstand written sources from the internet, books,

journals, magazines, newspapers, etc.

The 21st Century which is also known as the era of knowledge and .information

forces every individual to read in order to develop their horizons and to get varieties of

information. In todai s world, reading becomes a valuable experience. It is often said

" You are what you read.

ft

is said tlplt if you read nothing, than your mind withers, and your ideals lose their.. vitality ana sway•·.

Reading is one oflanguage skil1s that should be mastered by language leamers. Jt

words but he can't understand it. People read without giving much thought on how they

do it since they assume reading as common and take it for granted. Someone whose

primary task is teaching reading should consider the concept of reading.

Teaching reading gets more emphasis than do any other skills, because it needs

more time to spend than other skills. To be able to access the world's scientific and

technological information, the teaching of English in Indonesia has been started by giving

much more attention to the impJementation of developing reading comprehension. A

research report from Badan Litbang Depdikbud Rl in 2000 concludes that the reading

competence of High School and University Students was regarded low. l)le failure is

caused by the teachers who emphasize the teaching on emphasis on language structure

rather than language skills, particularly reading skHl. It also implies that the instructional

system of reading in Indonesia has failed to literate Indonesians Students. The system

emphasizes more on the letter recognition rather than decoding meaning from text.

In the Competency-Based CWTiculwn 2004 (Department of Education, 2005), the

general objective of teaching reading comprehension to students is that students are

expected to be able to comprehend the text in the fonn of narration, description, dialogue,

etc .• by having the reading skills, such as : (a) finding the specific information, (b) getting

the general information, (c) finding the explicit meaning of the main idea, (d} finding the

imp Jidt meaning of the main idea, (e) finding the detail information, (f) getting the implicit

information, and (g) interpreting the meaning of the words, phrases, and sentences based

on the context. The level of students' comprehensi o~ of the text as well as the uses of

reading text across curricuJum is part of the procedures in teaching reading comprehension.

Based on the writer's experience in teaching and learning practice in the Senior

High School where it was found that many students could read the words in a passage

fluently but were unable to answer questions in interpreting or identifying the main idea.

The fact shows that students failed to master Interpret ive or Inferential Comprehension.

Since Inferential Comprehension seems more difficult for students, teachers have to find

out a method that will help them in solving

1he

difficulties.

1n line with this background, this study will be carrioo out in two major types of

teaching reading methods.

The

first is

Directed

Reading-Thinking Activity (DRTA) and

the second type is

Comex.t

Clues method and their effects on Reading

Comprehension

particularly on Inferential Comprehension.

The wiiter proposes DRTA and Context Clues as the alternative me}hods in this

study

because both of these methods come from different areas of reading. DR T A is one

o f the general method for content area reading, while Context Clues is a reading method

focuses

on

word recognition (Bums, 1984:31 0). It is hoped that these methods would give

significant contribution to the mastery of reading comprehension.

Research Problem

In relation to the background of the study, the problems are fonnulated in a fonn of

questions below:

1. Do teaching method with DRTA and Context Clues give significant effect lO

Reading Comprehension?

2. Which of these method gives the most significant effect to Reading

Comprehension?

1.3

Objective of the Study

I

In connection with the above research problem , this study attempts

to

investigate

whether:

l. teaching methods with DRT A and Context Clues give significant effect

to

Reading

Comprehension.

2.

one of these methods gives the most

significant

effect

to Reading

Comprehension.

1.4

Hypothesis

The

hypotheses of

tlris study are fonnulated as

follows:

Hoi : Teaching methods with DRTA and Context Clues do

not

give significant effect

to Reading Comprehension.

Ho2 None

of

these methods

gives more

significant

effect to Reading

Comprehension.

Hal Teaching methods with DRTA and Context Clues give significant effect to

Reading Comprehension.

Tla2 One

of

these methods !:,.-ives

more

si!,111ificant effect to Reading

Comprehension.

Significance of the Study

The fmdings of this study are expected to provide useful information on the using

of the DR T A and Context Clues methods, where these methods could facilitate and lead

the students in comprehending English text. The description and the findi ngs would be

very useful for teachers of Eng] ish in selecting appropriate method, material, and approach

for the students in teaching reading comprehension, and in overcoming t11e students'

problem in

reading

comprehension.

Furthermore this study"is also expected to

be

useful for other1"e8earchers in getting

sources of information and as a trigger in conducting further in-depth research related to

the improvement of the students' reading comprehension.

r.6

Scope of the Study

Reading comprehension is usually difficult for students whose first language is not

English. The reading methods are badly needed by teachers to help students in reading

comprehension. There are many methods of teaching reading comprehension proposed by

some experts, such as: Casale, Stauffer, Manzo, Heller, Stetson, Robinson, etc.

In

this

case, the writer focuses on DRT A and C..ontext Clues methods, considering that these

methods comes from

different

area of reading where DRT A focuses

on

the

content

and

Context Clues on the word recognition . The writer assurnmed that' both methods would

give significant conribution on reading comprehension.

Since comprehension covers a large scope, it is not possible for the writer to cany

them largely. She makes a limitation. There are three taxonomic levels of comprehension,

namely: Literal Comprehension, Inferential Comprehension, and Critical Comprehension.,

the writer considers that it is not possible for her to touch all the levels in this study. First,

because it will take too

much

time as well as too many samples if these three levels of

comprehension are applied in this study, and second is that the levels of difficulties of

comprehension should be condsidered too. According to the writer, literal comprehension

has been applied mostly by teachers and students in reading comprehension class, where

the teacbers tend to give exercise mainly in literal questions, so it is not necessary for the

writer to apply this in her study. In inferential comprehension, the writer considers that the

level of difficulty is high enough and it is believed that the students of the second year will

face much problems jn doing the task. Thus, the ~ of the study is limited to the

Inferential Comprehension. The reason is because the difficulties is in the middle level

between Litera] and Gritical comprehensionl. so the students will not get frustrate in

understanding and doing the task. Furthermore, she has examined that most of the

questions in reading text found in the National Examination as well as in SPMB from

1996-2004 were generally given inferentially, and studies have shown that the students

mostly failed in finding the right answer.

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

5.1

Conclusions

J

T"'ILIK

PERPUSTA.,KA~~i,~

!

UNIMEO

Reading is a process m which infonnation ffom the text and the

knowledge possessed

by

the reader act together to produce meaning, so it is not

simply a matter of oottom-up word identification but a perc.eptual process that

involves interpretations on the reader's part, and understanding or comprehension is

the basis of reading and of learning to read.

Jt

has been explained previously

j,n

this

thesis that there are three levels of comprehension, they arc literal comprehension,

inferential comprehension, and critical comprehension. Furthermore, there are two

methods proposed in this study, they are Directed Reading-Thinking Activity and Context

Clues methods, and this study was conducted as an attempt to discover whether the DR1 A

and Context Clues significantly affect on reading comprehension. After the data analysis

conducted, it is concluded that the application of DRT A and Context Clues method is

significantly affected on reading comprehension. And it is also proved that from the three

methods, the DRTA is the most effective method in teaching reading cm~prehensio n,

followed by Context Clues method and the Traditional method.

5.2 Suggestions

In relation to the conclusions, it is suggested that teachers should be aware of

some re.levant metheds...,of teachif!g.l. particularly in teaching reading skills. And it is hoped

that teachers can develop their teaching methods and introduce or apply new methods of

reading which are relevant to the students, in order to improve students competence in

reading comprehension. Some examples of the methods are DRTA and Context Clues

methods which are proposed in this study, and it has been proved that these methods can

give significant effects to the students reading comprehension ability. And there is a need

for more research to discover some other methods in reading sKills.

~~s

G~

t::J'

~

$

>

Cl

z

).

~

~

m

m

REFERENCES

A Reading Comprehension Strategy. 2004. In http: //askeric.org/ cgi-bin/ printless. Cgil virtual/ on Thursday, June

17th.

Alexander, J.E. 1988. Teaching Reading. Boston:

Little, Brown.

Arikunto, S. 1993. Prosedur Penelitian Suatu Pendekatan Praktik. Jakarta: Bina Aksara.

Burns,

C.P. 1984.

Teaching Reading in Today 's Elementary Schools. Boston: Houghton Mift1in.

Comprehension Ouides for Older Readers. In http://www.suitel Ol.com/article.cfm/reading/6

6244/ on Sunday, October 17rll..

Collins. 1992. Dictionary of English Usage: Oxford University Press.

D ifficulties of Reading Comprehension Item. 2004. ln http/ www.readingcomprehensionconn ection.com/ on Thursday, June 1

ih.

Eskey ,

D. 1988.

Interactive Approach to Second l~anguage Reading. New York: Cambridge Press.

Gay,

L.R.

1987. l~·ducation Research: Competencies for Analysis and Application.

Ohio: Merril

Grounlund. 1976. Measurement and Evaluation in Teaching. Tllionis: University of lllionis.

Hatch.

E.,

& Farhady H. 1982.

Research Design and Statistics

for Applied l . in gui~ ti cs.

Rowley, Massachusetts: Newbury House Publisher.

H ayes, A.D. 1992. A Source Hook of Interactive Methodv for

teach

in ~

with texts.

Massachusetts: Allyn Bacon.

Heilman, A.W., Bla.ir T.R., & Roply W.H. 1990.

Principles

and Practices

ofTeaching

Reading. London: Bell and Howell Company.

Herbert

&

Clarck E. 1977. Psychology and Language; An Introduction to Psycholinguistics.

New York: Harcourt Brace Javanovich.

Karlin, R. 1971 . Teaching Hlementary Reading: Principles and ,','trategies. Harcourt B race

and Jovanich, Inc.

Karlin, R. 1984. Teaching Reading in High School. fmproving Reading in Content Areas. New York: Harper & Row.

Kurikulum Sekolah Menengah Umum: Garis-Garis Besar Program Pengajaran 1994. Bidang Studi Bahasa Jnggris. 1995. Jakarta: P & K

Muth, K.D. 1987. Struclure Strategies for Comprehending F:xpository Text. Reading Research and Instruction.

Nixon, C.N., & Nessel D. D. 1992. Meaning Making: Dire1-·ted Reading-Thinking Activity

for

Second Students. Prentice-Hall.

Nuttal, C. I 982. Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign /,anguage. London: Heinemann Educational Books.

Parry, S. & Bartram J. 1989. Reading Skills. London: Penguin Group.

Patricia, C., Joane D., & David E. 1988. interactive Approach to Second /,anguage Reading.

New York: Combridge Press.

Richards, J.C. 1985. 17ze Context o.lLanguage Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge-University

Press.

Sax, G. 1979. Foundation of Educational Research. Englewood -- Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc.

Schcolnik & Feverstein. 1995. Enhancing Reading Comprehension in the Language

Cla<rsroom. San Fransisco: USA.

Silberstein, S. 1987. Lets talk Another Look at Reading: Twenty-Five Years of .Reading Instruction in English Teaching Forum, D.C. US Government Printing Office.

Smith, F. 1985. Reading. London: London University Press.

Stauffer, R.G. 1975. Directing

The

Reading-Thinking Process. New York: Harper Collins. Tinambunan, W. 1988. ~~·valuation on Student Achievement. Jakarta: P & K

Tinambunan, W. 1993": Reading 1. Unpublished

William E. 1984. Teaching Reading in Foreign !.anguage. London: Macmillan.

William E. S., & Langley. 1987. Reading Skills in Practice. London.