A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY ON LITERAL READING COMPREHENSION ABILITY OF THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS OF SLTP II JEMBER IN THE 2000/2001 ACADEMIC YEAR

Abstract

Teaching English in junior high school is mamly aimed at making the students be able to communicate in English. Unfortunately, most of school graduates are still poor in comprehending reading passage. This problem in this research was: to what extent is the literal reading comprehension ability of the second year students of SL TP 2 Jember in the 2000/2001 academic year?The respondents taken were 47 students. The technique used was proportional . random sampling. Tne methods used to collect the secondary data were interview , documentation and observation while test was used to collect the primary data. The result of test were analysed descriptive quantitaively. It can be concluded that the second year students of SL TP 2 Jember in the 2000/2001 academic year still had difficult in their reading ability, it is shown by that result of the literal reading comprehension ability was enough classification ( 58.04 %). The most difficult of literal reading comprehension ability was in literal sentence ability (50.85 %) , while the easiest one was the stated main idea a,bility (83.83 %). And then, literal word meaning was 54,68 % or poor classification. Finally, it is suggested that the students should be trained their reading ability, especially on literal sentence meaning in order to develop their reading comprehension ability.