A Portrait of Teacher’s Strategies in Teaching Reading Comprehension at a Private Islamic School : A Descriptive Study

Abstract

Reading comprehension is an issue that teachers face every day. Reading comprehension is one of the skills that students are increasingly lacking across the curriculum and many of them are struggling. Experts dissect various factors that affect students' ability to read before, during and after reading literature. It is important to understand and be able to teach comprehension to help students understand and connect with the material they have read. Comprehension is an area where students are encouraged to strive for improvement. Developing successful strategies to engage students in the subject matter and improve comprehension is a source of great satisfaction for teachers. By supporting students in their academic work and utilizing a variety of teaching strategies can be an effective tool to help students improve reading comprehension. Effective teaching strategies are essential for teachers to improve students' reading comprehension. Teachers must apply strategies that suit the needs of students. Based on the above, this study aims to analyze teachers‘ strategies for improving students’ reading comprehension. Each teacher has different strategies to improve students' understanding of the material. There are many factors that influence a teacher's ability to teach effectively, one of them is kind/type of school. In Indonesia, there are two types of schools: public schools and private schools. An interview conducted with the English teacher in one of Private Islamic Schools in Jember showed that some students in her school lack reading comprehension. One of the reasons is because they come from Islamic schools and schools in the countryside. The lack of English learning during primary school/ MI causes students not to have a good understanding of English. This is why teachers need effective learning strategies and need to apply strategies that suit the needs of students. This research aim to analyze the strategies used by English teachers in one of the Private Islamic Schools in Jember in teaching reading comprehension. This study applying descriptive qualitative analysis method as a research design. Moreover, researcher conducted an interview with the English teacher. Data analysis carried out by The Creswell model. Based on the results from the interview on the teacher’s strategies in teaching reading comprehension, it was found that English Teacher one of Private Islamic School in Jember use three reading comprehensions strategies, such as generating and asking questions, predicting, and making inference. The English teacher uses three ways to implement the generating and asking question strategy, such as providing the text in the lesson, asking the students questions related to the text, and asking the students to ask questions, either to the teacher or their peers. In applying the predicting strategy, the teacher uses two steps: determining the story's theme that will be used as a discussion and preparing the materials (text and pictures or illustrations) needed for learning. As for the last strategy, which is the make-inference strategy, the teacher will ask the students to present their stories in front of the class. This method requires students' ability to understand the theme, storyline, and conclusion of the story made in groups. After the presentation, other groups will actively ask questions about the story. Students' activeness in this case will make them able to make conclusions from the stories that have been presented by their friends.