A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY OF THE SEVENTH YEAR STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT THROUGH READING ALOUD TECHNIQUE AT SMPN 1 PADANG LUMAJANG IN THE 2007/2008 ACADEMIC YEAR

Abstract

This study was intended to describe the seventh year students’ reading comprehension achievement through reading aloud technique. In teaching reading comprehension, the teacher used reading aloud technique. There were three steps in reading aloud technique, they were pre-reading, whilst reading and post reading. The steps in reading aloud technique were described as follows: First, in pre-reading, the teacher explains the objectives of the reading class that was to get comprehension of the text. The teacher told the students that they had to pay attention to the teacher’s reading as the teacher sometimes would ask some students to read the following sentences after the teacher. In order to raise the students’ interest and their background knowledge about the text, the teacher wrote the title on the board. Then the teacher explained and discussed about the key vocabularies with the students to get prediction and anticipation about the content of the text. Second, in whilst reading, the teacher read the text aloud while the students followed the text silently. The teacher asked three students in turn to continue reading the text after the teacher. Finally, the teacher asked the students several comprehension questions as post reading. In order to check the students’ comprehension about the text, the teacher asked the students in assigning a new title to reading selection, completing true-false of multiple choice exercises on the content, and developing a different conclusion.This research was conducted at SMPN I Padang Lumajang. The problem of this research was “ What is the seventh year students’ reading comprehension achievement trough reading aloud technique at SMPN 1 Padang Lumajang in the 2007/2008 academic year?. In this research, purposive method was used to determine the area. The respondents were 40 students of class VIIB. They were taken by cluster random sampling by lottery. The main data were collected by using reading test while the interview and documentation were used to collect the supporting data. The collected main data were analyzed by using the percentage formula, then they were classified based on the classification of the score level. The seventh year students’ reading comprehension achievement through reading aloud technique at SMPN 1 Padang Lumajang in the 2007/2008 academic year were 72.5% of the students xi

was fine and 27.5% of them was failed. Based on the result above, the English teacher is suggested to give more exercises in reading comprehension achievement through reading aloud technique in order to increase their reading comprehension achievement. In addition, the English teacher is suggested to teach reading comprehension through reading aloud technique.