THE EFFECT OF USING SKIMMING AND SCANNING TECHNIQUES ON THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT OF RECOUNT TEXTS AT SMPN 1 SILO JEMBER

Abstract

Mastering English for students is important since English is regarded as a foreign language in Indonesia. It is taught as an elective subject at elementary schools and as a compulsory subject at high schools. Besides, it is included in achievement test as well. One of the examples is it is included in the national examinations that must be passed by the students. In fact, the most problems provided in the examinations of junior high school level are reading texts. The texts that are available in the test are varied from short texts up to the long ones. Limited time is the most problem for the students in doing the test. Some techniques should be used to practice the students’ rapid understanding about the text. To solve that problem, the researcher proposed skimming and scanning techniques to be used in practicing the students’ rapid reading ability. The skimming technique dealt with the process of rapid coverage of reading a text to determine its gist or main idea. Then, the scanning technique dealt with the ability to read selectively to locate the specific information from the text. This experimental research was intended to know whether or not there was a significant effect of using skimming and scanning techniques on the eighth grade students’ reading comprehension achievement of SMPN 1 Silo Jember. This research used the experimental design with nonequivalent-groups posttestonly design. The respondents of this research were two classes of the eighth grade in the 2014/2015 academic year. The two classes were determined by using cluster random sampling (lottery) since the population was homogenous. They were determined by students’ English score in the previous midterm test. There were 72 students as the respondents of this research. There were 36 students’ of grade VIII B as the experimental class and 36 students of grade VIII A as the control class. The researcher used 4 lesson plans to conduct the teaching process xiii for 2 meetings in every class. The experimental class was taught reading by using skimming and scanning techniques, while the control class did not get any special treatment. It means that the control group was taught reading by using the conventional technique used by the teacher, that was discussion technique. There were 2 kinds of data in this research, namely primary data and supporting data. The primary data were obtained from the students’ reading posttest scores, while supporting data were obtained from the interview and documentation. The supporting data were used to support the primary data. The results of the students’ reading posttest were used to compare the two groups after the experimental group got the treatment. The results of the reading posttest were analyzed by using Independent Sample T-Test by using SPSS software. From the results of the data analysis, it was known that the mean score of the experimental group was 55.78 and the mean score of the control group was 48.92. In the output of the t-test column, it was shown that the sig. value was 0.022. It was lower than 0.05. It means that the mean score of the two classes (experimental and control groups) were different. According to the mean score of the two classes, it was known that there was a difference between the experimental class and the control class. Therefore, the null hypothesis which said: “There is no effect of using skimming and scanning techniques on the eighth grade students’ reading comprehension achievement of recount texts at SMPN 1 Silo Jember” was rejected and the alternate hypothesis which said: “There is an effect of using skimming and scanning techniques on the eighth grade students’ reading comprehension achievement of recount texts at SMPN 1 Silo Jember” was accepted. It means the experimental class that was taught reading by using skimming and scanning got better scores in the reading posttest than the control class that was taught reading by using discussion technique. Based on the result above, it could be concluded that skimming and scanning techniques were appropriate techniques for the English teacher to be used in the teaching and learning of reading comprehension. These techniques were effective to be applied as a variation in the teaching and learning process of reading.