STUDY OF THE VIII GRADE STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT OF RECOUNT TEXT AT SMP NEGERI 1 PAKUSARI JEMBER

Abstract

This research was conducted to describe the eighth grade students’ reading comprehension achievement of recount text at SMP Negeri 1 Pakusari, Jember in the 2014/2015 academic year. The research problem of this research was “How was the eighth grade students’ reading comprehension of a recount text at SMP Negeri 1 Pakusari, Jember?” There were seven classes of the eighth grade in the school. It consisted of class VIIIA, VIIIB, VIIIC, VIIID, VIIIE, VIIIF and VIIIG. There were 2 teachers that taught in eighth grade level. For VIIIA class up to VIIIE handled by Mr. R and the rest handled by Mrs. P. The total population of those seven classes is 247 students. In this research, the research participants were determined by using cluster random sampling with lottery because each class has different schedule of English lesson. Thus, it was better and easier for the researcher to take two classes with lottery among class VIIIA up to VIII G randomly. The subject of the try out in this research was VIIIA class. This class consisted of 35 students. The primary data of this research were collected from the students’ reading comprehension test while the supporting data were collected by using interview, observation, and documentation. From the data analysis result, the reading comprehension achievement test was administered to VIII D class. It was found that there were only 2 students or 5.56% of the eighth grade students were categorized as poor and there was no student (0%) who was classified as very poor category in their reading comprehension achievement. There were 9 students (25%) who got “excellent” category. There were 19 students (52.78%) got “good” category and there were 6 students (16.66%) who got “fair” category. In other words, there were 94.44% of the students had category from fair to good and excellent in their reading comprehension achievement. It means that the students’ reading comprehension achievement of recount text was good or excellent. In addition, the highest achievement and the lowest achievement of the students’ reading comprehension achievement of recount text were as follows. The highest reading comprehension achievement score was 100. It was achieved by the student’s number twenty six and thirty one. According to English teacher, that case was caused of their attention on the English lesson. They joined the English lesson very enthusiastically and carefully. They were also no doubt to ask the English teacher when if they had a problem in understanding the teacher’s instruction. That information was obtained from the result of the observation. On the other side, the lowest reading comprehension achievement score was 40. It was achieved by the student’s number three. That case might be caused of their lack attention on the English lesson. During observation, it was shown that they also looked passive in discussing the text in group. It might be caused of the lack of students’ cooperation in their groups. According to the statistical computation, the mean score of the VIII D class students reading comprehension test was 75.47. It was higher than the standard minimum score of SMP Negeri 1 Pakusari, Jember while the standard minimum score of SMP Negeri 1 Pakusari, Jember is 70. Based on the result above, it could be concluded that reading recount text can give a positive contribution in developing students’ reading comprehension achievement, especially for the eighth grade students at SMP Negeri 1 Pakusari, Jember.