THE EFECT OF THINK-ALOUD STRATEGY ON JUNIOR
HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT
IN READING COMPREHENSION
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:
ZULAIFA
Registration Number: 209121054
ENGLISH AND LITERATURE DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ARTS
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ABSTRACT
Zulaifa. 2015. The Effect of Think-Aloud Strategy on Junior High School Students’ Achievement in Reading Comprehension. A Thesis. Medan: English Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Medan.
This study deals with the second year junior high school students’ achievement in reading comprehension. The objective of the study was the investigation of the effect of Think-Aloud Strategy on students’ achievement in reading comprehension. The study was designed in experimental research. The population of this study was the 2014/2015 grade VIII students of SMP Swasta Sabilina Tembung, Kecamatan Percut Sei Tuan, Kabupaten Deli Serdang. The total number of population of the study was 389 students which consist of 12 classes. The sample of the research was 64 students. The technique used for obtaining the sample was the cluster sampling technique. The sample classes were divided into two groups, namely the experimental group that was taught by applying Think-statistically analyzed by using t-test formula at the level of significance (0.05) = 1.669 with the degree of freedom (df) = 65. It was found that the t-observed was higher than t-table (t-observed = 4.93 > t-table = 1.669; = 0.05). It means that Think-Aloud Strategy significantly affect the students’ achievement in reading comprehension.
Keywords: Reading Comprehension, National Examination, Cluster Sampling, Think-Aloud Strategy.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Thanks to the Majesty Lord, Allah SWT., for every uncountable blessing and unconditional love that is given to the writer. He is the only God who is always there to accompany, guard and teach the writer all the way through every single life, that the writer can pass all of them in different ways of doing things.
The writer realizes not only that writing this thesis is not a simple thing to do that she has faced a lot of challenges and difficulties, but also realizes that this thesis will never exists in the present time without invaluable suggestions and critical comments from the following people.
Hopefully, this thesis can grant good contribution for the scope of language learning and as references for the next researches.
There are lots of help and support that the writer obtained in finishing this thesis. Without those helps and supports, it must be hard for the writer to finish this assignment. Hence, the writer would like to express her deeply gratitude to:
Prof. Dr. Ibnu Hajar Damanik, M. Si. as the Head of State University of Medan
Dr. Isda Pramuniati, M. Hum. as the Dean of Faculty of Languages and Arts
Prof. Dr. Hj. Sumarsih, M. Pd. as the Head of English Department and Dra. Masitowarni Siregar, M. Ed. as the Head of Educational Program of English Department and as the writer’s Academic Advisor
Dr. Zainuddin, DIP.TEFL., M.Hum. as the writer’s Thesis Advisor.
Dr. Rahmad Husein, M.Ed., Prof. Dr. Lince Sihombing, M.Pd. and Dra. Sri Juriati Ownie, M.A. as the writer’s Thesis Examiners
Her beloved father, Drs. Khairul Azhar and lovely mother, Siti Jamilah Marbun, the deepest gratitude for their greatest supports, cares and loves to the writer. Thanks and love to the writer’s sister, Syarifa, Syarfani and Mawaddah, for they are the reason why the writer keeps on struggling The writer’s friends, from the community of Regular A 2009, especially d’OBs group, from the students organization of Persma Kreatif Unimed, the community of KoPer Indie, the Islamic Association of University Students of FBS Unimed, the Youth Red Cross 039 of SMA Negeri 6 Medan, and also my father and mother’s very kind friends, for every single help, support and love that mean a lot to the writer
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Last but not least, the writer extends gratitude for those who cannot be mentioned here, that give contribution on the writer’s life. May God be with them all the time.
Medan, March 2015
The Writer
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A. The Background of the Study... B. The Problem of the Study... C. The Objective of the Study... D. The Scope of the Study... E. The Significance of the Study...
CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF LITERATURE...
A. Theoretical Framework... B. The Population and Sample... C. The Instrument for Collecting Data... D. The Procedure of Collecting the Data... 1. Set Instrument... 2. Pre-Test... 3. Treatment... 4. Post-Test... E. Technique of Analyzing the Data...
CHAPTER IV: DATA ANALYSIS AND RESEARCH FINDING...
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CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION...
A. Conclusion... B. Suggestion...
REFERENCES…...
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LIST OF TABLES
Table Page
2.1. 2.2. 3.1. 3.2. 3.3.
The Example Text and Questions A... The Example Text and Questions B... The Research Design... Teaching Procedure in Experimental Group... Teaching Procedure in Control Group...
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LIST OF APPENDICES
APPENDIX Page
A B C D E F G H
Scores in the Experimental Group……….. Scores in the Control Group……… The Calculation of t-Test………. Table of t Distribution: Critical t Values……… Lesson Plan for Experimental Group………. Lesson Plan for Control Group………... Examples of Question-Answer Sheet……….. Answer Key………...
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. The Background of the Study
English has become the international language. There are more people
who speak English as a second language. In English, there are four skills those are
speaking, writing, reading, and listening. It is better for students to master all
those skills, but the fact is different. Many students do not master all of those
skills. For example, some of students are good in writing, but not for speaking or
vice versa. The other example, some students are good in reading, but not well in
listening or vice versa. It means that these students have different ability in
acquiring language.
Reading is one of the language skills that play an important role in foreign
language acquisition. Without reading, one cannot access written information.
Therefore, students need some abilities to understand and remember main ideas as
well as number of details that elaborate the main and supporting ideas in the text.
They also need to link the text to their knowledge base. In fact, reading is not as
easy as people think. It is not easy to have the ability of drawing meaning from the
printed page and interpret the information appropriately.
Harmer (2003:208), states that students sometimes have vague
understanding of reading. Reading passage seems to be too difficult for them
because of some conditions. The conditions here refer to the failure of
understanding the words, the sentences, the sentences’ unity and organization; and
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This phenomenon of reading problem can still be seen in the students of
one of the school in Tembung city which is the eighth grade junior high school of
SMP Sabilina Tembung, Kabupaten Deli Serdang. This junior high school, based
on the researcher’s preliminary survey, has two classes of VIII-4 and VIII-5 where
the students are still less in reading comprehension. This is evidenced from the
average value of students in both class is minimum those are 74.9 and 74.74.
Zukowski et.al (2002:1), says as one learns to read in English, one learns
new words and new grammar forms. However, there is much more than that to
learn how to read well. Reading is a process of learning to use a set of skill. A
skill is an ability to perform and act (to do something out) or to make something
well. A person can learn to become an expert by practicing a special strategy.
Since the students are expected to comprehend the reading text, their ability to
perform and act is very crucial, otherwise it will be difficult for them to
comprehend the text.
In reading process, students are expected to get knowledge and be familiar
with what is in the content, where as in comprehension the students are expected
to have more skills in order to get the meaning in the text. Richards and Schmidt
(2002:443) say that reading is “Perceiving a written text in order to understand its
contents. … The understanding that results is called reading comprehension.”
Reading comprehension is the process of simultaneously extracting and
contrasting meaning through interaction and involvement with written language. It
consists of three elements; the reader, the text, and the activity or purpose for
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Because reading is one of the most important skills a person may ever
acquire, it is important that students know what they are reading. If teaching
reading strategies will help students understand and gain meaningful information
from what they are reading and can improve their reading comprehension, then
that is what teachers should do. For this reason, the teachers should be able to
choose a suitable strategy in order to create a better, interesting and
communicative teaching and learning process.
As stated by Prado and Plourde (2005), “Reading strategies are tools that
teachers use to help students learn to read and comprehend what they are reading.
There are hundreds reading strategies available to help students with their
comprehension at different levels and with different types of text.” So in this case,
the writer needs to try to carry out a research in teaching reading and believes that
the Think-Aloud Strategy is a very good strategy to be applied in teaching
reading.
As Cárdenas and Montez (2009) show in the finding of their thesis with
the title ‘The Impact of The Think-Aloud Strategy in the English Reading
Comprehension of EFL 10th Graders’, the students’ engagement was increased in
the activities of reading because of the think-aloud strategy. Through the use of
this strategy the students could interact and construct meaning from the texts and
obtain better results in their reading comprehension.
The think-aloud method has been widely used as a strategy of instruction
by teachers to model for students the thinking process (Dunston & Headley,
4
The think-aloud helps to enhance students’ abilities of the thinking process
and understand what they comprehend, and it allows for the reader to connect
meaning and understanding with the text. Block and Israel (2004) further that
students feel that think-alouds are beneficial to their thinking process when the
correct method is taught to them and it allows for teachers to become better
educators. Teachers show their thinking process and how their thoughts are
occurring during the reading for students who are struggling with comprehension.
Through using a think-aloud teachers are able to vocalize how they think as they
read (Davey, 1983).
The purpose of a think-aloud is to model what good readers do before,
during, and after reading. It is used to elicit prior knowledge of a subject,
determine word meanings, and allow for readers to connect with the text,
providing an example of how to be expert readers and has been proven that
students can read with greater understanding (Block & Israel, 2004).
In this study, the researcher will use the Think-Aloud Strategy in the
process of reading text for students of the eight grade junior high school of SMP
Sabilina Tembung, Kabupaten Deli Serdang. The researcher chooses this junior
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B. The Problem of the Study
Based on the background of the study, the research problem is formulated
as the following: “Is there any significant effect of Think-Aloud Strategy on
students’ achievement in reading comprehension at eight grade of SMP Sabilina
Tembung?”
C. The Objective of the Study
The objective of the study is to find out the significant effect of
Think-Aloud Strategy on students’ achievement in reading comprehension at eight grade
of SMP Sabilina Tembung.
D. The Scope of the Study
This study focuses on the significant effect of Think-Aloud Strategy on
students’ achievement in reading comprehension, especially in the level that is
suitable for the junior high school students, that is the level of literal and
interpretive comprehension. To avoid excessively broad discussions, this study is
limited to find out the significant effect of Think-Aloud Strategy on the students’
achievement in reading comprehension at eight grade of SMP Sabilina Tembung
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E. The Significance of the Study
The findings of this study will be useful:
1. For the English teachers to improve their skill in teaching reading using
Think-Aloud Strategy.
2. For the English students to apply and comprehend reading materials by
using the Think-Aloud Strategy.
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CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
A. Conclusion
After analyzing the data, it was concluded that the using of Think-Aloud
strategy significantly affected the students’ achievement in reading
comprehension, since the t-observe > t-table (4.79 > 1.671; df = 60, = 0.05). The
application of Think-Aloud strategy in teaching reading comprehension enabled
the students to explore their ideas with their own words and enriched their ideas
with the others’. It means that the null hypothesis (H0) was rejected and the
alternative hypothesis (Ha) was accepted because there was significant effect of
Think-Aloud strategy on students’ achievement in reading comprehension.
B. Suggestion
Based on the finding, it is suggested that:
1. English teachers should use Think-Aloud strategy in teaching reading
comprehension because it enables the students to actively and
communicatively say aloud their minds to each other to make it easier
understanding texts.
2. The textbook writers should write and suggest the reader to use
Think-Aloud strategy in solving students’ problem in reading comprehension.
3. The readers who are interested for further study related to this research
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improve reading comprehension achievement by applying Think-Aloud
strategy.
4. The teachers, textbook writers, and the readers should also consider to take
some awareness that even though the Think-Aloud Strategy does
advantage in many aspects of learning and teaching reading, the users of
this strategy be careful enough in facing and overcoming its disadvantages
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