| dc.description.abstract | This research was intended to describe the grade-7 students’s Reading
Comprehension ability tested by using authentic reading materials from Internet. It
was conducted at SMP Islam Kunir Lumajang which was chosen by purposive
method with the following considerations: (1) reading comprehension class by using
authentic reading materials from Internet has been conducted at SMP Islam Kunir
Lumajang since 2007, (2) there had been no researcher yet who had investigated the
phenomena in this school, (3) the principal had given permission to the researcher to
conduct the research, so that the data could be obtained from this school. The subject
of the research were the grade-7 students of SMP Islam Kunir Lumajang in the
2010/2011 academic year. They were divided into 2 classes and each class consisted
of 22 and 21 students. Thus the total number of the students was 43 students. In this
research, the researcher used population method to determine the respondents,
because the number of the respondents was less than 100 respondents. The main data
were collected by using reading comprehension test while the interview, observation,
and documentation were used to collect the supporting data. The problem of this
research was” How is the grade 7 students’ reading comprehension ability tested by
authentic reading materials from the internet at SMP Islam Kunir Lumajang in the
2010/2011 academic year?” Based on the results of the data analysis, 80,21% of the
students were fine in reading comprehension ability tested by using authentic reading
materials from Internet and 19,61% were failed in reading comprehension ability
tested by using authentic reading materials from Internet.
Based on the results of the data analysis, it was found that among 4 indicators, the
highest achievement on the students’ reading comprehension trough authentic reading
materials from Internet was on text comprehension (76,74%), it was lied on excellent
category. Then, it was followed by sentences comprehension (58,13%), it was lied on
excellent and good category. Next, it was followed by word comprehension
(53,48%),it was lied on excellent and good category. This might happen because the
English teacher often used the authentic reading materials from Internet in teaching
reading comprehension. In contrast, the lowest achievement among the indicators was
paragraph comprehension (44,18%), it was lied on poor category and failed category.
This might be happen because the English teacher only gave a few of practice in
doing exercises dealing with paragraph comprehension. For that reason, it was very
important for the teacher to give more exercises in comprehending paragraph.
However, to comprehend the meaning of a paragraph, we need to know the parts of a
paragraph. A paragraph has three parts: a topic sentence, supporting details and a
concluding sentence (Wingersky et al, 1999:31). Moreover, in getting the meaning of
a paragraph, a reader needs to identify the topic sentence which states the main point
of a paragraph, identifying the supporting details which support the topic sentence of
a paragraph, then identifying the conclusion which restated and summarize the main
point discussed in the paragraph.
Related to the material, that was used authentic reading materials from Internet, it
seems that authentic reading materials from Internet are potential materials and useful
for language teaching. Authentic reading materials from Internet give a positive effect
on the students, that is they can increase students’ interest in reading activity because
they contain topics of interest to learners. By giving authentic reading materials from
Internet, the teacher has brought the students to interact with the real use of language,
which may familiarize them with the target language, because authentic reading
materials expose the students to real discourse. Being exposed to the real language,
the students will feel that they are learning to the real language. It give the awareness
and necessary skills to the students to understand how the language is used.
Moreover, authentic reading materials have value that is very useful for the students,
because authentic reading materials keep the students informed about what is
happening in the world, so they have an intrinsic educational value.
In general, most of the respondents have enough ability in reading
comprehension through authentic reading materials from Internet. Therefore, the
English teacher should keep continuing to teach reading comprehension trough
authentic reading materials from Internet. Besides, the English teacher could increase
students’ reading comprehension by giving more exercises in comprehending
paragraph trough authentic reading materials from Internet. | en_US |
