A STUDY OF THE GRADE 8 STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT AND THEIR DIFFICULTIES IN READING RECOUNT TEXTS AT SMP NEGERI 1 BANYUPUTIH SITUBONDO

Abstract

Among the four skills, reading is considered to be the important skill because it becomes the central of the teaching and learning process. Most of the teaching learning process is associated with reading. In reading a recount text, it is not always easy for the students to comprehend the text. Sometimes they experience difficulties in reading the recount text. This research is intended to describe the grade 8 students’ achievement and their difficulties in reading recount texts at SMP Negeri 1 Banyuputih Situbondo. It is related to their achievement to cope with the problems in comprehending word meanings, sentences, paragraphs, and the whole text. The respondents of the research were the grade 8 students of SMP Negeri 1 Banyuputih Situbondo. The respondents in this research were taken by using proportional random sampling by lottery from the 4 existing regular classes because they were parallel classes as informed by the English teacher. The number of the respondents were 28 students taken proportionally from those 4 classes. The primary data were collected from the reading test and questionnaire. The supporting data were collected from interview, and documentation. Based on the research result, it was known that the students’ paragraph comprehension achievement was the lowest or it can be said that paragraph comprehension was the most difficult among the other indicators. The percentage was 16.67%. Meanwhile, as stated in the result of data analysis and the classification presented in Table 4.1 (see page 36) and Table 4.4 (see page 40), in general the 8 grade students’ achievement in reading recount texts was classified as ‘failed’ (M= 32.97%). This result was supported by the results of each indicator, namely the percentage of the students’ word comprehension achievement was categorized as failed (M= 34.92%). Then, the percentage of the students’ sentence comprehension achievement was categorized as poor (M= 44.84%). In addition, the percentage of the students’ paragraph comprehension achievement was categorized as failed (M= 16.67%). The last, the percentage of the students’ text comprehension achievement was categorized as failed (M= 28.57%). Based on the result of this research, it is recommended to the English teacher to train and give more drill, especially how to find the word meaning and how to get the meaning of the sentence in the contexts. The students’ difficulties in reading recount texts, especially paragraph comprehension can be overcome when the students have enough vocabulary and know the meaning of the word in the sentence. Thus, the teacher is suggested to give more explanation about how to get the meaning of word as the key point to understand a recount text. Then, it is also recommended to the students to do as many exercises as possible dealing with the word comprehension, sentence comprehension, paragraph comprehension, and text comprehension in reading recount texts to increase their reading comprehension achievement.