IMPROVING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT BY USING FOLKLORE
Oleh:
SRI MULYATI PRIHATININGSIH Guru Bahasa Inggris SMP Negeri 7 Jember
Abstrak. Beberapa tahun terakhir hasil belajar siswa SMPN 7 Jember pada mata pelajaran Bahasa Inggris pada skill Reading Comprehension khusus kelas IX D masih rendah. Mereka kurang bergairah dalam mempelajari reading comprehension,selain karena keterbatasan kosakata dan jenis teks yang diajarkan kurang bervariasi sehingga nilai rata-rata yang dicapai hanya 60, sedangkan standart ketuntasan belajar minimal yang ditetapkan sekolah 65. Untuk mengatasi permasalahan ini digunakan teks “Folklore” sebagai alternatif pilihan, karena bahan ini selain memiliki sifat menghibur pembacanya, folklore juga memiliki keuntungan lain seperti: mudah diingat, universal/umum, penuh makna, banyak jenisnya dan banyak mengandung pesan moral yang berguna untuk kehidupan siswa. Hasil penelitian dengan teks “Folklore” dalam pembelajaran dapat meningkatkan minat baca siswa sehingga nilai rata-rata hasil belajar mereka pada siklus ke satu 66, 78 atau 80% sudah diatas kriteria yang ditetapkan. Pada siklus kedua 85% dari mereka sudah diatas kriteria. Penerapan teks “Folklore” efektif pada pembelajaran reading comprehension sehingga siswa kelas IX D SMPN 7 Jember semakin bergairah dalam belajar Bahasa Inggris. Sehingga kosakata mereka semakin bertambah , mereka juga semakin tergugah untuk mempelajari jenis-jenis teks yang lainnya. Guru menjadi lebih terampil dalam mengajarkan jenis teks folklore dan lebih bersemangat untuk mengajarkan jenis teks yang lain diwaktu yang akan datang. Kata-kata kunci: Folklore, Membaca pemahaman
Introduction
Reading is a process of constructing or developing meaning from printed text (Cooper, et al at Rosmalina, 2004). In line with this idea, Eskey at Rosmalina (2004), states that reading is primarily cognitive process. It means that when reading, students are transferring information from the text into their brain by understanding the explicit or implicit meaning of the text. Besides, reading is one of the important skills to master in English. It is the first of the most important factors that can support the process of mastering the language skills and improving can improve knowledge (Hanafi, 2000).In conclusion, it can be said that reading is for meaning. Readers are reading in order to gain information, knowledge, and understand the meaning of printed text.
categories: understanding vocabulary, specific information, the main idea, and the ability to infer or to imply Brown (at Payani, 2003).
According to the experiment, many students still have difficulties in learning English, especially in reading comprehension. It is because students must study about the vocabularies, grammar, and sentence structure when read a text (Byrnes, 2008). It makes reading a complex skill. It is not just read but also understanding other skill or component in English. In addition, there are some possible factors affecting language teaching. Those factors can be classified into internal and external factors. According to Hanafi (2000), internal factors are related to psychological condition of the learners such as motivation, confidence, worry and interest. External factors are related to some varieties of the ideal condition in language teaching.
Based on the above fact that reading is one of the important things for English learners, teacher should find out an effective way to make the reading comprehension possible to achieve. Nutal and Dupuis (as quoted in Payani, 2003), say that the important consideration for teachers in selecting reading is that the materials should be able to raise students’ interest to read.
Then, the result of the daily test which was done on October, 10. 2011, it was found that the ninth year students’ score of reading comprehension were less than the pre-determined school score level. The average score of reading comprehension was sixty (60) whereas the standard score to be achieved was sixty-five (65).
It is however in line with the reading scores achieved by the students of SMP Negeri 7. The evarage of reading comprehension score is still less than pre-determined criterion, such as 5.6. Most of them have not achieved the pre-determined criterion, yet.
Yet, the teaching instruction employing the chosen folklore provides better reading comprehension. Here, folklore is considered as the teaching material that can be applied in the teaching and learning process in the classroom.
Dundes (1965), folklore is oral tradition including myths, legends, folktales and jokes. They are rich of vocabularies that will help the students understand about English text. They are so short and memorable that the students easy to understand and comprehend the English text
Also, it is based on the research conducted by Mansur (2004), it was found that folklore could improve the students’ reading comprehension. The aveage score increased from 5.2 up to 5.8. Again, It was proved that folklore could improve the interest of reading comprehension. Another study by Lestari (2004), proved that folklore could help the students in learning English. In her research, she used fable as the material to improve the reading comprehension achievement 5.6 up to 6.1.It was briefly concluded that one kind of folklore that is fable could improve the students’ reading comprehension achievement of the respondents.
Problem
Objective
The objective of the research is to improve the students’ reading comprehension achievement
Significance
It is hopefully expected that the result of this classroom research will give valuable significance for helping the students to 1) overcome the difficulties and problems in comprehending reading text, 2) to give new experience in teaching reading comprehension, 3) increases the students’ interest and motivation in learning English.
Literature
According to Grellet (1996), reading comprehension is considered as an active process involving predicting, checking, guessing, and asking one’s self-question, so that it is possible to develop the students’ power of inference through systematic practice or introduce questions that encourage students to anticipate the content of text from its title and illustration or at the end of story from preceding paragraph. While students are reading, they transfer the information from the text into their brain. They activate their reading skill in order to get the meaning of the text and get the information from the text.
Further, he states that reading comprehension is the process of understanding a reading text. It means that when students read a reading material, they must be able to get information from the text. Furthermore, they must comprehend the words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and paragraphs in order to gain the meaning of the whole text (1996).
The purposes of reading comprehension are as follows: 1) to gain information; 2) To verify existing knowledge; 3) To critique one’s ideas; 4) To enhance knowledge of the language being read and 5) to get enjoyment or pleasure (Byrnes, 2008).
According to Hanlon (1999), there are ten advantages of folklore such as short; fun; memorable; universal; infinitely meaningful; infinite variety; linking to oral and written literatures, popular culture with many academic subjects and skills; enhancing transtitions from childhood to adult life and uniting children and adults. Method
This research has already applied a classroom action research (CAR) in which the cycle covers the activities of planning the action, implementing the action, class observation and evaluation, and reflection (Elliott, 1991). Planning becomes the most important step before carrying out the action. It consists of constructing the lesson plans for the cycles, preparing the material and instructional material and test items.
The area of this research was SMP Negeri 7 Jember. It lies on Jln. Cendrawasih 22 Jember. The research subjects of this research were the ninth year students of SMP Negeri 7 Jember especially the class IX-D which has 45 students. Among the seven existing classes, the researcher took one class purposively based on the scores of reading test.
In analyzing the data, the researcher used descriptive quantitative method to analyze the data from reading comprehension test and questionnaire. The reading comprehension score was calculated by dividing the score with the total score then timed with 100% as following formula:
X =
X = mean score of the students Σx = the total scores of the students n = the total number of the students
Table 1. Classification of thie scoree level
Score Category
80-100 Excellent
70-79 Good
60-69 Fair
50-59 Poor
0-49 Failed
(Depdikbud, 2004)
Result
Cycle I
The action of the firt cycle has been done in five meetings including the reading comprehension test. In this case, other English teacher became the observer while the researcher became the doer of the action. The first meeting has been done on October 17th 2013 and the second on October, 18th 2013. Meanwhile, the test was done on October 24th and 25th 2013. The result shows that most of the respondents (80%) have absolutely achieved the determined criteria. It means that most of them have got the score more than or the same as sixty-five (65). There are only 20% or 9 students having not achieved the criteria. More detail see the following table.
Table 2. Reading comprehension achievement
No. Score Range Frequency Percentage (%)
1 80 – 100 5 11.11 %
2 70 – 79 17 37.78 %
3 60 – 69 16 35.56 %
4 40 – 59 5 11.11 %
Based on the above data, it is important to carry out the last step of this action research; that is reflection. It is being done as soo as the first cycle has bee done for the sake of preparing the next cycle or not. Since, the mean score of the reading comprehension test after being taught by using folklore is 66,78 and there are 80 % of the students who got the score at least 65.
It means that the standard score requirement of reading comprehension achievement in this action research has been achieved since there is an improvement of the students score in reading comprehension. Their score improved from 60 to 66.78. But, second cycle was absolutely needed to know the consistency of the result in the first cycle.
That’s why; the writer has already proposed to have another cycle for the sake of knowing the consistency of the research result. It is important that the research result become an alternative model of English reading instruction for the writer and other English teacher at SMPN 7 Jember.
Cycle II
Based on the previous plan, second cycle was done together between the writer and the other English teacher. As usual, the researcher became the doer of the action while the other became the observer. As soon as the collected data was being analyzed, the result shows that 38 respondents or (85 %) achieved the criteria. There are only 15 % or 7 students having not achieved the criteria yet. The following is the gained data taken from the cycle II.
Table 3. Reading comprehension achievement
No. Score Range Frequency Percentage(%)
1 80 - 100 7 15.56 %
2 70 – 79 16 35.56 %
3 60 – 69 15 33.33 %
4 40 – 59 6 13.33 %
5 0 – 39 1 2.22 %
Based on the above data, it is briefly assumed that the result showed its consistency. There is however any improvement of reading comprehension achievement. The average score has increased from 66, 78 up to 67, 74. Again, the number of respondents achieving the determined criteria has also increased from 9 up to 7 students.
Discussion
The analysis of the action results has been done as reported in the previous explanation. Here, the result of the reading comprehension test has improved in cycle 1. The mean score of the students’ reading comprehension test was 66,78, it has fulfilled the standard mean score requirement of the mean score that was 65. There are at leastr 80 % of the students got score at least 65.
educational material helps the students to develop their reading achievement and interest.
On the other hand, the instructional materials has absolutely motivated the students’ learning interests. During the reading instruction, the respondents have actively involved in the classroom discussion, participation such as having responses to the available questions. It is briefly assumed that the chosen materials make the students interested to the reading instruction.
Conclusion
Based on the above research result, it is concluded that folklore improves the students’ reading comprehension achievement. The result of the reading comprehension test is 67.74 and there are about 85 % of them achieving higher score that 65 as the determined criteria. And, there are only 15% not achieving the criteria anymore.
Suggestion
Considering the result of this classroom action research, some suggestions are proposed to maily English teacher and other researcher. It is suggested to English teacher that more folklore becomes significant instructional material for teaching reading comprehension. It is however suggested that English teachers hopefully expected to conduct further research in the same topic but using different type of folklore,
Bibliography
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Hanlon, T.L. 1999. General Giudelines for Teaching with Folktales, Fairy Tales, Fables, Ballads, and Other Short Works of Folklore. Available at http//:www.shortworksoffolklore.com.htm. Retrieved on July, 24 2008. Lestari, E.A. 2008. Using Fables in Teaching English to Improve the Second Year
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Payani, D, Diem C.D and Purnomo, M. E. 2003. The Readability Levels of the EFL Text and the Reading Comprehension Levels of the State High School Students in Palembang. Lingua Jurnal Bahasa dan Sastra volume 5 page 47.
