A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY OF THE SEVENTH GRAGE STUDENTS' READING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT AT SMPN 12 JEMBER

Abstract

This research was intended to describe the seventh grade students’ reading comprehension achievement especially in reading descriptive texts at SMPN 12 Jember. Hence, this research used descriptive study as the research design. There were two reading indicators in this research, namely identifying main ideas and identifying supporting details. The research subjects in this research were determined by using cluster random sampling by lottery because each class had the similar capability that can be seen from the mean score of the previous English score. The data of the research were collected from reading comprehension test, interview and documentation. Further, the data of the research was calculated by using descriptive statistic in the form of percentage. The result of the analysis of the research showed that most of the seventh grade students’ reading comprehension achievement at SMPN 12 Jember was classified as good with the mean score of their reading comprehension achievement was 70. It means that 70% of the seventh grade students in general got the score between 70 – 80 in reading descriptive text. However, they were some students still had not achieved the standard minimum score which was 70. Dealing with the result of the research indicators, it was found that the seventh grade students’ ability in identifying supporting details was categorized as “good” with the percentage was 76.09%. Furthermore, the students’ ability in identifying main idea was 58.69% which was categorized as “poor”.