USING AUTHENTIC READING MATERIALS TO IMPROVE THE SEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS’ ACTIVE PARTICIPATION AND THEIR READING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT AT SMP NEGERI 2 PUGER IN THE 2012⁄2013 ACADEMIC YEAR

Abstract

SUMMARY

Using Authentic Reading Materials to Improve the Seventh Grade Students’ Active Participation and Their Reading Comprehension Achievement at SMP Negeri 2 Puger in the 2012/2013 Academic Year; Hasanah Arista Devi, 080210401026; 2013; 69 pages; English Education Program of Language and Arts Education Department of the Faculty of Teacher Training and Education of Jember University. This Classroom Action Research was intended to improve the seventh grade students’ active participation and their reading comprehension achievement by using authentic reading materials at SMP Negeri 2 Puger in the 2012/2013 academic year. This research subjects were the students of class VII-G that was determined purposively, because their reading comprehension achievement score was low (their mean score was 57.2) which was below the standard mastery of English of the school (65). It was known from the result of interview with the English teacher in the preliminary study. Besides, they also still faced difficulties in comprehending English texts, especially in descriptive text. They had problems in comprehending words, sentences, paragraphs, and the whole text. Finally, both the researcher and the English teacher agreed to apply authentic reading materials from internet as the reading materials in teaching reading because they were expected to be beneficial for the students to overcome their problems in reading comprehension. This research was carried out in two Cycles. Each cycle covered the stages that include planning the action, implementing the action, observing and evaluating, and reflecting the action. These activities were conducted in each Cycle. The first cycle was conducted in three meetings including the reading test. The data about the students’ reading comprehension achievement were collected through the reading comprehension test. Meanwhile, observation was used to monitor the teaching and learning process of reading by using observation guide in the form of checklist.

xiv The results of the students’ reading comprehension achievement in the first cycle showed that the percentage of the students who got score 65 or more was 67.4%. In addition, the results of observation in cycle I revealed that only 63.95% of 43 students actively participated in the teaching and learning process of reading by using authentic reading materials from internet. The rest of the subjects (36.05% of 43 students) were passive in joining the lesson. They were reluctant to ask questions and answer the researcher’s oral questions. Besides, some students did not make some note about the lesson. Based on those results, it could be concluded that the action given in the first cycle was not successful yet. Therefore, the actions were continued to the second cycle by revising the lesson plans in the first cycle by considering the students’ weaknesses in the first cycle. In Cycle 2, the researcher used English and Indonesian language in the teaching and learning process. Besides, she gave clear instruction to the students to find the difficult words in the texts by writing them on the whiteboard and finding the meaning of the difficult words together with the whole class. The results of the students’ active participation in the teaching and learning process of reading by using authentic reading materials from internet improved from 63.9% in Cycle 1 to 80.2% in Cycle 2. Moreover, there was also an improvement on the percentage of the students’ reading comprehension achievement test. It improved from 67.4%, in Cycle 1 to 82.5% in Cycle 2. It means that both the students’ active participation and their reading comprehension test improved in the second cycle and achieved the successful criteria of this research. Thus, the action research was stopped. Based on the results above, it could be concluded that the use of authentic reading materials in the teaching and learning process of reading could improve the students’ active participation and their reading comprehension achievement in two cycles. Then, it is suggested to the English teacher and the students to use authentic reading materials from internet as an alternative source of reading materials in teaching reading. It is due to the fact that authentic reading materials from internet

xv could improve the students’ active participation and their reading comprehension achievement. At last, for the future researcher, this research could be used as references to conduct further research dealing with different research design or research method to improve the quality of reading achievement.