THE EFFECT OF THE APPLICATION OF SYNONYM CLUES ON READING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT OF THE YEAR-8 STUDENTS AT SMPN 2 JATIROTO LUMAJANG

Abstract

The research design was quasi-experimental design namely; Randomized Post Test Only Control Group Design. The respondents of this research were the eighth grade students of SMPN 2 Jatiroto Lumajang in the 2012/ 2013 academic year. The research respondents were determined by cluster random sampling through a lottery. The total number of the respondents was 73 students that consisted of 37 students of VIII B as the experimental group taught by using Synonym Clues technique, while the control group consisted of 36 students of VIII C taught by using Question-Answer method. A comparison was made between the two groups after the treatment. Based on the post test calculation, the mean scores of the experimental group was higher than that of the mean scores of control group (75.05>64.19). The t-test formula was used to analyze the data with significant level of 5%. The result indicated that the t-test value was higher than that of t-table (8.19>2.00). it means that there was significance mean difference between the experimental group and the control group. It indicated that null hypothesis was rejected, thus the alternative hypothesis stating that there is a significant effect of the application of synonym clues on reading comprehension achievement of theYear-8 students at SMPN 2 Jatiroto Lumajang in the 2012/2013 academic year was accepted. Based on the result of this research, the English teachers are suggested to apply synonym clues in teaching reading comprehension.