1
THE EFFECT OF USING PARTNER READING STRATEGY TOWARD STUDENTS’
READING ACHIEVEMENT AT JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL
A Study at Eighth Grade Students of SMP Negeri 4 Muara Bungo/Jambi 2013/2014 Academic Year
Oleh:
Dwi Uthari Intan Pratiwi*)
**) Mayuasti **) Hevriani Sevrika Staf Pengajar Program Studi Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat
Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk melihat pengaruh dari strategi Partner Reading dalam pengajaran Bahasa Inggris khususnya reading. Jenis penelitian ini adalah pre eksperiment dengan one group pre test- post test design.
Populasi dari penelitian ini adalah siswa kelas VIII SMP Negeri 4 Muara Bungo/ Jambi Tahun Ajaran 2013/2014.
Dalam pemilihan sampel peneliti menggunakan cara hitung komputerisasi dengan rumus liliefors. Hasilnya diperoleh kelas VIII5 sebagai kelas tryout, VIII2 sebagai kelas eksperiment. Peneliti memberikan pretest untuk mengetahui pemahaman awal siswa terhadap teks sebelum melakukan perlakuan atau treatment. Perlakuan yang diberikan sebanyak 8 kali pertemuan masing-masing kelas. Perlakuan yang diberikan adalah strategi Partner Reading di kelas experimen. Setiap pertemuan peneliti memberikan materi yang sesuai dengan silabus kelas VIII semester kedua yaitu teks narrative dan recount. Setelah melakukan percobaan, peneliti mengadakan posttest untuk mengetahui hasil dari pengaruh strategi yang telah dicobakan.
Berdasarkan hasil penelitian yang diperoleh menunjukkan bahwa terdapat pengaruh yang positif dari strategi Partner Reading dalam meningkatkan reading achievement siswa kelas VIII SMP Negeri 4 Muara Bungo/
Jambi Tahun Ajaran 2013/2014. Hal ini ditunjukkan oleh analisis ttest diperoleh ttest 2, 83 dan ttable 2,04 berarti ttest >
ttable. Dengan demikian hipotesis dalam penelitian ini diterima. Sehingga dapat disimpulkan bahwa strategi Partner Reading dapat memberikan efek yang baik terhadap hasil Bahasa Inggris khususnya dalam reading (membaca) pada siswa kelas VIII SMP Negeri 4 Muara Bungo/ Jambi Tahun Ajaran 2013/2014.
Kata kunci: strategi partner reading, pemahaman membaca siswa
*) Penulis
**) Pembimbing
2 A. INTRODUCTION
Reading is one of human’s activities. Most of people like to read some books because reading has some advantages, especially for students.
Reading helps the students’ success in school and indeed throughout life. As the students, to get a good mark in the school, they have to read a book related to the subject that they learned. Reading can improve the student knowledge because they can know about several things that they do not know, such as the history of the great people who had lived before and know about the differences culture in the world. In addition, students’ reading achievement can determine their ability in answering some questions based on a text, because reading test has the main priority.
In teaching reading, the teacher should understand about indicator of reading such as, the students must able to read the text loudly, the students must understand about monolog and functional texts, and the teacher must comprehend the main ideas of the text. In addition, the students can get difficulties in comprehending a text, if there is no background knowledge, belief, and interest to the text. In order to build students’ comprehension, teacher should give particular treatment such as applying interesting strategy in teaching and learning process.
To improve students’ reading comprehension, besides applying appropriate strategy, teacher should also pay attention to several activities that when she or he conveys material to the students. There are three activities that should be done by the teacher, they are pre-teaching activity, whilst-teaching activity, and post-teaching activity. Pre-teaching activity is done at the beginning of the lesson and meant to focus the students’ attention, so that they can participate actively during reading. Then, whilst- teaching activity, this activity is the main teaching learning process, which is conducted through exploration, elaboration, and confirmation process.
The last, post-teaching activity, this activity is done to end the lesson. The teacher should apply the steps or procedures of strategy used into these when she teaches the students.
However, based on the researcher’s pre- observation and interview with the English teachers at SMP Negeri 4 Muara Bungo/Jambi 2013/2014 academic year, many students of the eighth grade have low reading achievement. The researcher found the some conditions in teaching reading. The researcher found the teacher does not yet apply strategy effectively in teaching reading. The teacher just explains about the material and the teacher asked the students to read the text. After the students read
the text, the teacher gave some questions related to the text, all of the students have the same answer, and it caused the students cheating, because the teacher did not guide the students well in finding the answer of the question. Meanwhile, the teacher should guide students to find the answer of question itself. The teacher asked the students to find the example of the text at home and made summary about it. This strategy had been done repeatedly in the classroom.
In addition, the problems are also proved by the result of their final examination at first semester. The score are not achieves minimal-standard score for English subject, they are 75 for excellent class and 70 for regular class.
Based on the problem above the researcher knows that students’ reading achievement is affected by teaching reading strategy. Because of the teacher uses in appropriate strategy for the students in learning reading, this condition causes a lot of students were bored in teaching and learning process, so it gives impact to the result of students reading test. Because of that, teacher should apply appropriate strategy in teaching reading in order to solve problem.
B. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE 1. Reading Achievement
Reading achievement is students’ reading score after the students doing a reading test. Harries and Hodges in Allington (2011, p.110) define that reading achievement is significantly below expectancy for both individual reading potential and for chronological age or grade level. Reading achievement can show students’ reading potential since early grade level until next level. In briefly, the teacher knows whether students’ reading achievement improving or not. Then, the teacher can help students who have low ability in reading comprehension through giving attention and another strategy in teaching reading.
Based on the explanation some experts above, reading achievement is the result score of students in reading test. The students get high or low score in reading depend on their reading comprehension. Reading achievement can also help the teacher to know students’ reading comprehension.
Thus, the teacher can give attention and another strategy to help students to improve their reading comprehension and get a good achievement.
2. Teaching Reading
As language teachers, it is important to know how to teach reading. In teaching reading, the teachers have to know about the principles of teaching reading itself. According to Nunan (2003,
3 p.74-75), there are seven principles for teaching reading: Firstly, teaching reading can exploit the reader’s background knowledge. If students read on an unfamiliar topic, the teacher may need to begin the reading process by building up their background knowledge, such as setting goal, asking questions, making predictions, teaching text structure and so on.
Secondly, teaching reading builds a strong vocabulary base. The readers should be explicitly taught to use context to effectively guess the meanings of less frequent vocabulary. Thirdly, the teacher teaches for comprehension. The teacher can see how far the students’ comprehend with give test.
Fourthly, the teacher works on increasing reading rate. To assist students in increasing their reading rate, teachers overemphasize accuracy which impedes fluency. The teacher must work towards finding a balance between assisting students to improve their reading rate and developing reading comprehension skills. Fifthly, the teacher teaches reading strategies.
Reading strategy means not only knowing what strategy to use, but knowing how to use and integrate a range of strategies. Sixthly, the teacher encourages readers to transform strategies into skills. A skill is strategy that has become automatic. Strategies can be defined as conscious actions that learners take to achieve desired goals or objectives. Lastly, teaching reading strive for continues improvement as a reading teacher. The quality of the individual teacher is integral to success of second or foreign language.
Based on explanation of some experts above, the researcher can be summarized that teaching reading has several principles and three activities are generally recommended to make teaching reading more interesting. The principles of teaching reading are generalization about reading instruction. It is useful for the teacher, how the teacher should achieve in teaching reading. The activities in teaching reading include pre-teaching reading, whilst-teaching reading and post-teaching reading.
a. Narrative Text
Narrative text is one of the kinds of genres that must be mastered by eight grade students at Junior High School, because this material includes in the curriculum standard (KTSP) of Junior High School (2006). According to Danesi (2008, p.71), narrative is a text that has been constructed to represent a sequence of events or actions that felt to be logically connected to each other or causally interwined in some way. The key of narrative structure is the stories follow chronological order that have a beginning, middle and end of the story.
Therefore, to build cronological order it is needed plot. Plot is a series of episode which holds the
readers attention while they are reading and determine quality of the story. Besides, plot would be support with conflicts that main important elements, conflict among the characters would drive the story progress.
In addition, Perry and Thomas (2001, p.50) say that the generic structures of narrative text are orientation, complication and resolution. First, orientation is to set the scene and introduces the participants. Second, complication is a crisis arises.
Last, resolution is the crisis solved to the right or wrong way. After discussing about the generic structure, the students should know language features in narrative text. Baskerville and Wagner (2000, p.21) describe that there are several items of language feature in narrative text. First, noun groups create a detailed, accurate and atmospheric description.
Second, adjective gives the character, whether human, animal or things, an identifying appearance, mannerism or personality. Third, adverbs and adverbial phrases indicate when, where and how the particular events or incidents take place. Fourth, descriptive language creates word pictures or images.
Fifth, verbs are action verbs telling the reader what was said, felt or thought. Sixth, narratives are generally written in the past tense. Seventh, tenses changes to present or past in the dialogue. Last, sentences can be joined by using connectives or conjunctions to do with time.
b. Recount Text
Recount text is one of the kinds of genres that must be mastered by eight grade students at Junior High School because this material includes in the curriculum standard (KTSP) of Junior High School. According to Patrick and Baskerville (2000, p.8), recount text is a text that has social function to retell experiences, events, stories from the past in sequence. The chronological order of the recount assists the readers to understand the time sequence of the event. In recount text, the students may share their own experience or someone else. This purpose is either to inform, or to entertain the audience.
In learning recount text, the students have to know about the generic structures of recount text.
Warner (2009, p.6) states that there are three generic structures of recount text. They are orientation, event, and conclusion. First, orientation is to tell who, where and when. Second, event is to retell important events sequentially. Third, conclusion is final personal comment on events. also adds grammar focus of recount text is nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and conjunctions. After discussing about the generic structure, the students should know language features in recount text. Keir (2009, p.9) states that language features of recount text is using nouns,
4 action verbs, conjunction, and time connectives, adverbs and adjectives. The purpose of recount text is to retell a sequence of events so that it entertains.
Similarly with Palmer (2011, p.43), there are some language features of recount text, they are: simple past tense, time connectives and other device to aid chronological structure, first or third person writing, and focus on specific participants.
3. Partner Reading Strategy
In teaching process, the teacher should apply interesting strategies that can make the students are interesting to study. One of those strategies is Partner Reading Strategy. This strategy has been defined by many experts. Those definitions are different but support each other. Cheung in Chapman (2009, p.144) explains that Partner Reading is to provide the students with opportunities to read the selections.
Partner Reading strategy consists of the strategy that helps the students to discuss and how process the information with their friend that they learn. They try to get the meaning of the text together with their partner. This strategy makes them easier to know the content about text.
Partner Reading strategy has several procedures that is needed to be followed by the teacher in the classroom. Partner Reading strategy requires students to work in pairs do listening each other read and asks questions to promote reading comprehension. Bowen (2004, p.142) says that the procedure of Partner Reading are; first, the all of the students in class are paired one another by teacher to provide increased opportunity to practice. Second, the teacher ranks the students from highest to lowest performance in reading levels for to pair students, which is the students has highest score paired with student has lowest score. Third, the teacher introduces the roles, rules, and materials to the students, and then the teacher gives the text will be read by students. Fourth, during Partner Reading activity the students will complete three tasks, there are; error correction, retell the story, and make summary in paragraph. The teacher provides an opportunity for the students to practice each step.
During the five minutes, the first reader reads orally until a timer goes off. During the oral reading activity, the teacher provides corrective feedback and necessary. To provide feedback, the teacher identifies an correctly read word, prompt the correct response, states the correct word, and prompt re-reading.
Finally, after students understand the partner reading and error correction procedure, the teacher asks questions to students to help them understand and remember what their read. The teacher discuss the passage and partner reading strategy result with the class.
In addition, Kuhn and Schwanenflugel (2008, p.45) state some advantages of Partner Reading strategy, there are; first, the students can spend significant amount of time reading aloud or follow along with their partner. This strategy is able to manage their time. Second, Partner Reading provides the students with opportunity to read a text repeatedly. Third, the students receive connection and support from their partner.
C. METHOD OF THE RESEARCH
This research was experimental research because the problems and purpose of the research had some characteristics. According to Gay and Airasian (2000, p.367), experimental research is the only type of research that can be hypothesis to establish cause and effects relationship. However, there are three kinds of experimental research design. They are pre- experimental, quasi experimental and true experimental.
In this research, the researcher used The One-Group Pretest-Posttest, which is part of pre- experimental design to known the effectiveness of Partner Reading strategy toward students’ reading skill in junior high school at second grade. The researcher used pre-experimental design because the researcher thought that in junior high school, the students not focus in learning reading skill.
Therefore, the researcher has not to compare the strategy because the researcher just wanted to know the effectiveness of Partner Reading strategy itself.
The design of this research was The One- Group Pretest-Posttest design, which only consists of one class. The class had chosen to get the treatment.
Just like Gay and Airasian (2000, p.109) say that The One Group Pretest-Posttest Design involved a single group that is pretest (O1), expose to a treatment (X), and posttest (O2). In this design, the researcher had seen any change that had occurred between result of pretest and posttest. Before doing the treatment (Partner Reading Strategy) the researcher should do measurement or pretest for the students. After that, the researcher did treatment (Partner Reading Strategy) to improve the students’ reading achievement. Next, after using the treatment (Partner Reading Strategy), the researcher did measurement of posttest for the students. Then, the researcher compared the measurement before and after treatment. In addition, Sugiyono (2012, p.74) states that one group pretest-post test design consist of one group (no control group), this design has three processes that is pretest, treatment, and posttest. The researcher focused on differences of pretest and posttest that occurred.
5 D. RESEARCH FINDINGS
In this research, the researcher collected the data based on students’ try-out, pre-test, and post- test. The researcher chose the sample based on students’ reading mark of semester exam that had been done in all classes at eighth grade students at first semester of SMP Negeri 4 Muara Bungo/ Jambi that were registered in 2013/2014 academic year. The research started from May 1st 2014 and last meeting was June 6th 2014, the researcher explained the schedule on research schedule.
The researcher found mean score of students’ reading test in final semester exam. After finding the mean score of each class, the researcher selected sample. In selecting sample, there was a step that researcher done such as normality, the researcher used Liliefors test. After the researcher analyzed the normality of population, the researcher got the population were normal and not normal. Lo of VIII1
(-0.0283) smaller than Lt (0.1610), Lo VIII2 (-0.0261) smaller than Lt (0.1610), Lo of VIII3 (0.0097) smaller than Lt (0.1610) and Lo VIII5 (-0.0050) smaller than Lt (0.1610). The result of normality of each class was normal except VIII4, because Lo (0.5367) bigger than Lt (0.1610). After that, the researcher used piece of paper that will be written each class; VIII2, VIII3, and VIII5. Then, one piece of paper will be selected randomly. One of them selected as experimental class. Finally, the researcher chooses another class as try out class which has the same character. For this case, the researcher will treat the sample class by using Partner Reading Strategy, because the researcher only focuses on one class as sample. The class that researcher had been chosen VIII5 as a class try-out and VIII2 as a class sample. In this researcher, the researcher not found out the homogeneity, because the researcher just got a sample.
After got sample, the researcher gave try out to VIII5 to found validity, reliability, item difficulties, and item discrimination of the test. The try out was hold on Thursday, May 1st 2014 The try out test consisted of 40 items in multiple choice form with time 75 minutes. The item was about narrative text and recount text. The participants of try out were 28 students.
After doing try out, the researcher found the validity and reliability. Validity was analyzed by product moment formula. This analyzing is gotten from the multiply result of the total score of students’
try out and the total score of students’ mark in first semester from English teacher of SMP Negeri 4 Muara Bungo/ Jambi 2013/2014 academic year.
Thus, the result of the validity range was 0.98. Based on the criterion in validity, this range indicates that the test (try out test) had very high validity.
Moreover, after getting the validity of the test, the researcher analyzed the reliability of the test.
In this case, the researcher used the Spearman-Brown formula. The result of the reliability range was 0.98.
Based on the criterion in reliability, this range indicates that the test (try out) had very high reliability.
In addition, the researcher found 4 items (3, 15, 26, 40) were too difficult. So, there were 4 items should be revised from 40 questions. Furthermore, by had been seen the result of the item discrimination that included to poor and very bad categories. The researcher found 32 items were accepted in try out and 8 items were revised number (3, 6, 7, 15, 20, 30, 35, and 40).
Next, the researcher gave pretest on Monday, May 5th 2014 in experimental class (VIII2) that consists of 30 students with time 75 minutes.
After that, the researcher collected students answer and matched with the answer key of pretest question that had given. The researcher got mean score of the class. The purpose of the researcher gave pretest was to compare students score before and after giving treatment.
Furthermore, the researcher gave treatment for the experimental class VIII2. It began on Friday, May 9th 2014 until Friday, June 6th 2014. The researcher taught narrative and recount text by using Partner Reading Strategy the treatment in experimental class. In teaching process, the researcher gave the monolog text, they were narrative text and recount text.
After giving treatment for eight meetings, the researcher gave posttest to the experimental class on Friday, June 6th 2014. The posttest was given to 30 students. The researcher gave 40 items in multiple choices with time 75 minutes. Next, the researcher calculated the score of the class. The researcher compare the score of pretest and posttest, the researcher found out the sum of differences score both of the tests, it was used formula of Gay and Arisian (2000, p. 489) . To find out needed and n. was the total of differences (47) and n was the total of students (30), and the result of was 1.56. After the researcher got , so the researcher would find out was Partner Reading strategy effective or not to improve students reading achievement. The researcher used formula by Gay and Airasian (2000, p. 489).
CONCLUSION
Reading achievement is a part of reading skills that gives the students some information via text. In reading, the students get more information and knowledge. In teaching reading process, the
6 teacher uses the appropriate strategy because it can influence students’ interest and motivation in reading achievement.
Furthermore, this research used Partner Reading Strategy as a way to help students’ difficult.
The researcher chose One-Group Pretest-Posttest Design that part of Pre-experimental design. This design the researcher used in SMP Negeri 4 Muara Bungo / Jambi especially for eighth grade students in 2013/2014 academic year. This research used cluster sampling as a technique to get a sample. The researcher got class VIII.2 as the sample of this research with the student 30 students. In this research, the data that was analyzed by researcher was students’ reading test in SMP 4 Muara Bungo/
Jambi. As mention in Chapter 1, the purpose of this research is to find out the effectiveness of using Partner Reading Strategy toward students’ reading skill at eighth grade students of SMP Negeri 4 Muara Bungo/ Jambi 2013/2014 academic year.
This research, the researcher got two data from pretest-posttest with gave pre-test after that the researcher did the treatment until eight meeting in class sample and the researcher uses two genres, they are narrative and recount text. In the end of the meeting, the researcher gave posttest. The researcher used two scorers to got the data; they are researcher as first scorer and English Teacher in the class as the second scorer. The data the researcher got would combine the data from teacher and researcher itself to got final score.
Moreover, after got the final score, the researcher found out the mean differences of pretest- posttest. The ways to got mean difference of data is to decrease post-test to pre-test data. The researcher gets the mean differences from pre-test and post-test with 1.56. After that, the researcher found out the t- test in the result 2.83 would be compare with the t- table 2.04 degree of freedom 29 and at the level of significant 0.05. The researcher got the analysis about the hypothesis that “The Partner Reading Strategy is effective toward students’ reading skill”.
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