Enhancing Students’ Reading Comprehension Achievement by Using Story Mapping Technique

Abstract

This classroom action research was intended to enhance the tenth IPS 3 grade students’ reading comprehension achievement by using Story Mapping technique at MAN 2 Jember. Based on the preliminary study, it was found that the tenth IPS 3 grade students had problem in reading comprehension. It happened because the teacher only taught reading by asking them to read the text aloud and to do the exercise individually. However, this technique did not seem to be effective to be implemented. It made the students not enthusiasm in reading activity. In addition, the students also had difficulties in getting the information from the text because they only read the text without comprehending it well. It was proved by looking at their mean reading score (55.03) which was the lowest among the other tenth grade classes. It also did not achieve the minimum of standard score (75) for English subject. Thus, the using of Story Mapping technique was done to enhance the students’ reading comprehension achievement. The study was done in two cycles to check the consistency of the research result. Each cycle covered two meetings of the action implementation and one meeting for administering the test. Besides, the observation checklist consisted of 9 indicators, namely 1) Asking questions related to the text, 2) Mentioning the setting elements (the character part), 3) Mentioning the setting elements (the time part), 4) Mentioning the setting elements (the place part), 5) Mentioning the problem elements, 6) Mentioning the goal elements, 7) Mentioning action elements, 8) Mentioning the outcome elements, and 9) Doing the exercises given individually. The students were categorized as active if they could fulfill at least 7 indicators. The observation results in Cycle 1 showed that there was 90.4% students were actively involved during the teaching and learning process. It means that it improved 59.15% from 31.25% in pre-Cycle. Besides, the percentage of the students who achieved the minimum of standard score (75) significantly increased into 71.88% from the pre-Cycle (3.12%) to Cycle 1 (75%). In other words, Cycle 1 fulfilled the criteria of success because 75% of students achieved the research criteria. Then, the action was still continued to Cycle 2 to check the consistency of the students’ reading comprehension achievement and their active participation. The result of Cycle 2 showed much better result. It was reported that 98.4% of the students participated actively during the learning process. It means that there was 8% improvement from Cycle 1 which was 90.4%. Furthermore, the increasing also happened to the students’ reading comprehension achievement test that showed 81.25% of the students passed the standard minimum score. Based on the result above, it can be concluded that the use of Story Mapping technique could enhance the tenth IPS 3 grade students’ reading comprehension achievement.