Improving Class 8-F Students' Active Participation and Their Reading Comprehension Achievement by Using Authentic Reading Materials from the Internet at SMP Negeri 1 Jember

Abstract

The Classroom Action Research with the cyclical model was used as the research design. It was intended to improve the 8-F students’ active participation and their reading comprehension achievement. The research participants were the year 8 students of SMP Negeri 1 Jember in the 2013/2014 academic year, specifically the students in class 8-F. This class was chosen because this class had difficulties in comprehending English reading texts. On the other hand, most of the students had low motivation and interest during the teaching learning process. In this case, authentic reading materials from the internet was chosen to help the students to improve their active participation and their reading comprehension achievement. The research target was 75%. The research target had already been achieved in cycle 1, but it was continued to cycle 2 to see the results consistency. The results of the mean score of reading comprehension achievement test had improved from 69 (before implementing the action) to 78 and 79 (after the action in cycle 1 and cycle 2). The percentage of students who got the standard score of 75 or higher also improved from 56% (before implementing the action) to 82% and 86% (after the action in cycle 1 and cycle 2). Moreover, the percentage of the students’ active participation improved from 65% (before implementing the action) to 77.5% and 78% (after the action in cycle 1 and cycle 2). In conclusion, the use of authentic reading materials from internet was able to improve class 8-F students’ active participation and their reading comprehension achievement at SMP Negeri 1 Jember in the 2013/2014 academic year.