A OESCRIPTlVE STUDY OF READING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT USING CLOZE TEST FORMAT AT THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS OF SMUN I PESANGGARAN IN THE 2000/2001 ACADEMIC YEAR

Abstract

Cloze test is one of the tests used for measuring reading comprehension. Unfortunately, language teachers do not always use this test format; whereas, this test is very easy to design and score. For this reason, this research was conducted to see how the students' reading comprehension achievement using cloze test format was. This research was conducted at SMUN I Pesanggaran from 30th October untill 15th November 2000. The respondents were 52 students which were taken by using proportional random sampling. To achieve the research objective, a teacher made test was administered to get the main data; while interview and documents were used to get the supporting data. To know the test reliability, the try-out was conducted on 4th November 2000 to the students who were not the respondents, by using split-half method. Based on the research result, the average score of the students' reading comprehension achievement was in the category of less tlran enouglr (58.96%). In detail, most the students ( 61,54%) performed satisfactory in reading comprehension, that is respectively in the category of very good ( l ,92% or 1 student), good (26,93% or 14 students) and enough (32,69% or 17 students). While the others (38.46%) were in the category of less than enough (19,23% or 10 students), bad (13,46% or 7 students) and very bad (5,77% or 3 students). This means that, it is necessary for the teacher to help the students to improve their reading comprehension achievement, by giving them more practice in reading and exercises in the form of cloze test format.