(CLASSROOM ACTION RESEARCH) Reading Comprehension Through SQRW PROPOSAL (CLASSROOM ACTION RESEARCH) 1.
2.
Title
Introduction
: Improving the Achievement of the Second Years Students of SMP Negeri 2 Tegallalang in Reading Comprehension Through SQRW in Academic Year 2009/2010. :
Reading comprehension is an essential skill for learners of English. For most of learners it is the most important skill to master in order to ensure success in learning. With strengthened reading skills, learners of English tend to make greater progress in other areas of language learning. Reading should be an active, fluent process that involves the reader and the reading material in building meaning. Teaching students how to utilize the skills and knowledge they bring from their first language, develop vocabulary skills, improve reading comprehension and rate, and monitor students’ improvement are just some of the elements that teachers must consider in preparing for an English language reading class. Learning to read in a second or foreign language is a process that involves learning skills, learning new vocabulary and patterns, and cultivating the ability to transfer skills from the classroom to the real world, where English may be used. In Indonesia, English has been taught as a foreign language both as local current subject for elementary school students and as compulsory subject for junior and senior high school students. The 2006 School Based Curriculum or Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan, KTSP, gives opportunity for every school to develop their own curriculum that taking account the standards designed by the government. According to the 2006 curriculum or KTSP, student of English are expected to master in language skills namely listening, speaking, reading, writing and to have communicative competence in using it. Having communicative competence means students have competencies in understanding and producing discourse in spoken and written under meaningful context which influenced by situation and culture. The basic competency of reading skill mentioned in KTSP of SMP for the second year students is to comprehend transactional discourse and dialogue leading to interpersonal meaning and/or oral monologue in the forms of descriptive, narrative, recount, and report. The achievement indicator the students must gain is being competent in the sub reading skill, including comprehending main idea, specific information, word meaning and textual reference of the text. However, the thing that many students find difficulties in reading activity is to comprehend or understanding the information of the reading material. The fact of the students’ problem in comprehending reading text above also become the problem encountered by the second year students of SMP Negeri 2 Tegallalang. Almost student have a problem in comprehending reading text, in the four reading sub skills. The reading class is bored them because of the English teacher in teaching reading only involve tasks in the text book, read the text, and answer the questions following the text. In line with the above reality, it is important to take a consideration in order to solve the problem and to improve the students’ achievement in reading comprehension. One thing that must be taken into account is the strategy in teaching reading. The strategy will use in this study call SQRW, a Reading strategy mostly used in reading books.
The writer conduct this study for the purpose of improving the second year students in reading comprehension, especially in comprehending main idea, specific information, word meaning and textual reference of a text using SQRW. 2.1. Statement of the Problem 2.1.1. Major Problem Could SQRW strategy improve the second year students of SMP Negeri 2 Tegallalang in comprehending reading text? 2.1.2. Minor Problem 1) Could SQRW strategy improve the achievement of the second year students of SMP Negeri 2 Tegallalang in finding out the main idea of reading text? 2)
Could SQRW strategy improve the achievement of the second year students of SMP Negeri 2 Tegallalang in finding out the specific information of reading text? 3) Could SQRW strategy improve the achievement of the second year students of SMP Negeri 2 Tegallalang in finding out the word meaning of reading text? 4) Could SQRW strategy improve the achievement of the second year students of SMP Negeri 2 Tegallalang in finding out the textual referent of reading text? 2.2. Objective of the Study 2.2.1. Major Objective The major objective of the study is to improve the achievement of the second year students of SMP Negeri 2 Tegallalang in comprehending reading text through SQRW strategy. 2.2.2. Minor Objective The minor objective of the study is: 1) to improve the achievement of the second year students of SMP Negeri out the main idea of reading text through SQRW strategy. 2) to improve the achievement of the second year students of SMP Negeri out the specific information of reading text through SQRW strategy. 3) to improve the achievement of the second year students of SMP Negeri out the word meaning of reading text through SQRW strategy. 4) to improve the achievement of the second year students of SMP Negeri
2 Tegallalang in finding 2 Tegallalang in finding 2 Tegallalang in finding 2 Tegallalang in finding
out the textual referent of reading text through SQRW strategy. 2.3.
Scope of the Study This study is focus on finding out if the SQRW strategy could improve the students’ achievement on reading comprehension, especially on the four sub reading skills, or not. The genre of the reading text will use in this study is in the form of narrative and is limited to the class A of the second year students of SMP Negeri 2 Tegallalang in academic year 2009/2010 2.4.
Hypothesis The hypothesis of the study is that SQRW strategy could improve the achievement of second year
students in class A of SMP Negeri 2 Tegallalang in comprehending reading text, especially in finding out the main idea, specific information, word meaning and textual referent. 2.5.
Definition of Key Term.
2.5.1. Achievement Achievement is defined as the act of achieving or something achieved especially by great effort or persistence quoted by Merriam-Webster, in Juniari (2003:6). Achievement in this study is something that is achieve at the end of a lesson using a test. In other words, it refers to the scores the students gain in the test of reading comprehension. 2.5.2. Reading Comprehension Gillet and Temple in Juniari (2003:8) stated that reading comprehension is a search for meaning, actively using our word knowledge and the text to understand new things we read. We need knowledge of the world to understand new things, need to be familiar with various text structure encountered and need to be active in seeking meaning to rise up from the passage. 2.5.3. Narrative reading text According to Tonjes, et al. (1990), as citied in http://cps.uswp.edu/courses/ EDUC310/Texstruct/narrativetext [http://cps.uswp.edu/courses/%20EDUC310/Texstruct/narrativetext] narrative text is the text used to entertain, to tell a story, or to provide as aesthetic literary experience. They also said that narrative text is based on life experience and is person-oriented using dialogue and familiar language.
2.5.4. SQRW Strategy SQRW is a four-step strategy for reading and taking notes from chapters in a textbook. Each letter stands for one step in the strategy. Using SQRW will help you to understand what you read and to prepare a written record of what you learned. The written record will be valuable when you have to participate in a class discussion and again when you study for a test. It is an effective reading process, related to some techniques that usually help the readers not only to enjoy their reading but also to read and remember the main point. 3.
Review of Related Literature
3.1.
Reading Comprehension
Comprehension, a complex cognitive process, is central to acquiring a new linguistic system. Input must be decoded in some comprehensible fashion for second language acquisition to occur. In the case of a foreign language reading comprehension, the reader uses previous knowledge to construct and integrate meaning from text. During reading there is simultaneous cognitive processing involving pattern recognition, letter identification, lexical access, concept activation, syntactic analysis, propositional encoding, sentence comprehension, activation of prior knowledge, information storage, and comprehension monitoring. According to connectionist models (e.g., Koda, 2005, 2007; Nassaji, 2002. in Diana Pulido and David Z. Hambrick) the generic knowledge structures, or background knowledge, that are accessed during reading are largely
determined by the quality of the text base that the learner constructs. Text base quality is affected by the individual’s text processing efficiency (i.e., ability in lower-level processes, such as word recognition and syntactic parsing) and working memory. Gillet and Temple in Juniari (2003:9) stated that reading comprehension is a search for meaning, actively using our word knowledge and the text to understand new things we read. We need knowledge of the world to understand new things, need to be familiar with various text structure encountered and need to be active in seeking meaning to rise up from the passage. Simanjutak (1998), as citied in Raharja (2004:9), agreed on reading as a cognitive process of making interaction with print and monitoring comprehension to establish meaning which involves the process of identification (the ability of the reader to identify or determine what the text says) and the process of interpretation (the readers’ activity to make sense or to draw out the meaning of the reading text they read). Reading comprehension is process of understanding written text or information presented by the author and affected by many factors. Those are factors within the readers, factor within the written message, and factors within the reading environment (Pearson Johnson, in Gipe (1991:156). Comprehension processes and second language acquisition processes, although somewhat overlapping, are also distinct. For example, comprehension involves constructing a mental representation from the propositional content for the purpose of understanding the message. However, in order for a linguistic system to be developed through comprehension activities, additional input processing must occur. Such processing entails making form-meaning connections from the input, or focusing attention on new forms and associating them with their functions or referents. 3.2. Narrative Text Depdiknas (2003:80) stated that narrative text learned by the students of junior high school related with problematic events whose social function are to amuse, entertain, and deal with actual or vicarious experience in different ways. Narrative text is reading for story. It is often called fiction in which the values are used to describe, explain human behavior (citied in http;//www.ksde.org/outcomes/texttype.doc). Meanwhile, Tonjes, et al. (1990), as citied in
http;//cps.uswp.edu/courses
/EDUC310/textstruct/narrative.asp, stated that narrative text is the text used to entertain, to tell a story, or to provide as aesthetic literary experience. They also said that narrative text is based on life experience and is person oriented using dialogue and familiar language. 3.3. SQRW SQRW, it might sound sort of complex but its actually quite simple and straight forward. SQRW is a four-step strategy for reading and taking notes from chapters in a textbook. SQRW is a four-step strategy for reading and taking notes from textbooks that will help you better prepare for exams, better prepare for class discussion, improve your reading comprehension and help you learn better using textbooks. SQRW stands for Survey, Question, Read and Write. Survey
: The first step in the SQRW reading strategy is Survey. Before you actually start reading a chapter you first survey the chapter. You read the chapter title, introduction, headings and the summary or conclusion at the end of the chapter. When you survey you should also review any pictures, graphs, maps, or tables in the chapter and the caption (text explanation that goes with
each). The purpose of surveying the chapter is to quickly learn what the chapter is about before reading it in its entirety. Question
: The second step in the SQRW reading strategy is to ask questions as your read. Questions help you to focus and give your reading purpose. Instead of simply reading without purpose now you are searching for useful, applicable information. Use each chapter heading to develop questions for that chapter. For example, for chapter titled “Housing Training Dogs” you might develop the question “How many ways are there to house train a dog?” or “What is involved in house training a dog?” If a chapter heading contains several ideas you may want to form a question for each idea. Always remember to use the chapter headings to develop questions – don’t use the conclusion, summary, introduction or the text to develop your questions.
Read
: The R in the SQRW stands for Read and represents the third step in the SQRW reading strategy. Once you’ve surveyed the chapter and developed questions based on the chapter titles you should then read the information contained in the chapter to answer the questions you developed. As you read the chapter in an attempt to answer the questions you developed you may find it necessary to modify your question(s) or you may think of more questions that need to be answered. Make sure to focus as you read and take time to thoroughly answer each question you develop.
Write
: The final step in the SQRW reading strategy for reading textbooks is Write. Make sure to write each of the questions you form along with its answer in a notebook. After you’ve written down each question as well as the answer to each question review each question again to make sure you have completely answered the question.
3.4. Empirical Review SQRW strategy is a strategy used in teaching reading which is based on the strategies the good readers use when they are reading. There were other strategies with the same basis had been empirically tested by some researchers of IKIP Negeri Singaraja. One of them is called SQ3R which stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recite, and Review. Putri (2002), as one of the researchers, conducted a study for the purpose of improving the students’ ability in reading comprehension through SQ3R strategy. Her study showed that the strategy could improve the students’ ability in reading comprehension. It could be seen from the mean score of the achievement test conducted in every cycle which showed gradual improvement. SQRW and SQ3R are similar. Both of them devote the students to survey or preview the title and introductory paragraph of the text, read, answer the questions, identify the important information and summarize the information in ones’ own words The second strategy is PARTS strategy which was conducted by Juniari (2005). The purpose of his study was to improve the first year students’ reading comprehension through the strategy. The result indicate that PARTS strategy provided guidance and advantages to help the students in comprehending reading text. PARTS as well as SQRW strategy similarly ask the students to do preview activity, answer the questions, read the text and also rewrite or recreate text.
4.
Research Methodology
4.1. Subjects The subject of the study is the second year students of SMP Negeri 2 Tegallalang in academic year 2009/2010, especially class VIIA. The subject consists of 40 students, 23 male and 18 females. 4.2. Research Design The researcher implemented a classroom action research. Carr and Kemmis stated “Classroom Action Research is a form of self-reflective inquiry undertaken by participants in social (including educational) situation in order to improve the rationality and justice of (a) their own social or educational practices, (b) their understanding of these practices, and (c) the situation in which practices are carried out.” (McNiff, 1988, in Sandiani, 2005:6), Classroom action research is conducted in cyclic process, involving the process of planning, action, observation and reflection (Kemmis and Taggart, 1998:10). This action research was conduct to the second year students of SMP Negeri 2 Tegallalang by implementing cycles. The cycle could be figure out as follows. Cycle Diagram
4.3. Research Instrument Some instruments use to obtain the data are: 1)
Reading task
2)
Reading tasks are used in each session during the action of the cycle. Test There are two kinds of test administered in this study, those are pre-test and post-test. The pretest is conducted to see the problems faced by the students. The post-test is conducted at the end of each cycle to find the students’ improvement in reading skill.
3)
Teacher’s diary Teacher’s diary is designed in the form of unstructured observation sheet. It is used to identify extra finding, like students’ behavior and attitude during the teaching learning process.
4)
Questionnaires Questionnaires are conducted when the post-test are administrated to the students. The purpose is to see the students’ opinion as well as their feeling during the teaching learning activity.
5)
Interview An informal interview is conducted to see the students’ opinion to the way they usually do in reading class.
4.4. Research Procedure This present study conducts in order to improve students’ ability in reading comprehension through SQRW strategy to encourage them to read and feel confident about their ability to understand written text. Due to the aim of this study, an action-based research, is the one that proposed by Kemmis and Taggart (1998, in Sandiani, 2005:14). 1). Pre-test The researcher observes the students’ attitude and behaviors toward the test given during the pre-test. This pre observation was conducted in order to find out whether they find any difficulties or not. Based on the result of the pre-test and the pre observation, the researcher then decide whether to stop or continue this study and conducting a treatment by applying SQRW (Survey, Question, Read, Respond, Review and reflect) strategy in teaching learning reading. 2). Cycle The treatment is going to be conducted in cyclic process and the cycle consists of three meetings. The cycle is started with reflection. Based on the result of that reflection, then making a plan, action and observation, evaluation and get reflection again the action before based on the result of the observation the evaluation. The action procedure that will be implemented in this study as follows: ·
Planning : oMaking a teaching scenario for each meeting. oPreparing the reading material will be used in the exercise and post test. oPreparing the teaching media (pictures, photos and slides) oPreparing the work sheet. oPreparing the test. oPreparing the observation instruments ( teacher’s diary and questionnaire)
·
Action
:
Steps in the teaching and learning process oPre-activity -
Engagement (gives short brainstorming related to the topic for focusing the students’ attention).
owhilst-activity
-
Exploration (giving student a chance to train)
-
Elaboration (giving a challenge to reinforce the student to enlarge their knowledge)
-
Confirmation (to generalize the material learned : sentence pattern, phrases, new words)
oPost-activity -
Assessment
Based on the action procedures above, the researcher can construct a teaching scenario as follows: ACTIVITIES TEACHER
AIM
STUDENTS
Pre-activity. 1. greets the students.
1.
Responding greeting
2.
check students attendant
the
2.
Listening and responding
3.
check students readiness the class.
the 3.
Prepare their stationeries
4.
- Look at the picture. - Talk about the picture
5.
predict what the text telling about.
for
4.
Showing pictures related to the text prepared and write the title of the text prepared to use in reading class 5. Ask the students to predict what the text is going to tell about.
6. 6.
INTERACTION
asked the students some questions
answer the questions orally
TIME ALLOTMENT
-
To get the students ready for the class
T - Ss Ss -T
5 min
-
To generate students’ interest
T - Ss Ss -T
10 min
To predict topic - To create an interest on the topic and content To relate topic with Ss’ Prior knowledge.
T - Ss Ss -T
-
-
To give an
T - Ss Ss -T
related to the topic orally
Whilst-activity 7. Distributing the reading text to students with the question list.
8.
check the students understanding of the questions
9.
Read the text.
awareness of nature and structure of text
7.
take the text
8.
Ask if they don’t understand the questions yet.
T – Ss
-
To train Ss to see their purpose of reading
T - Ss Ss -T
T - Ss 9.
Listening to the teacher
-
To train Ss’ listening skill T - Ss
10. Read the text for the second time.
10. Repeat after the teacher
-
To train Ss for the pronunciation
11.
11.
-
To integrate reading with speaking and note keeping
-
To scan and skim for meaning
Ask the students to read the text and note the difficult words, phrases.
Read the text silently and note the difficult words, phrases they did not understand.
T - Ss Ss - Ss
individually 12.
13.
ask the students to answer the questions individually.
ask the students to check their answers with
12.
13.
Answer the questions
Check their answer with their neighbors.
-
To train Ss get information from text. - To integrate reading with writing. -
To train Ss to share their
Ss - Ss
65 min
their neighbors.
14.
check the answers together orally
opinions ideas.
14.
15. Scoring their answers. 15.
16.
17.
Submitting the students’ work sheets. Conducting post test at the end of this cycle.
Post activity 18. Giving students enough time to do the task.
16.
Submitting the students’ work sheets.
21.
Check the answers together with
Write the score they get on their worksheets.
T - Ss Ss -T
-
To integrate reading with speaking and writing. individually
-
To train Ss to be fair
Submitting the work sheets.
T - Ss Ss -T
T - Ss Ss –T
17. take the test
Individually 18.
Doing the task
-
To measure the students’ ability
in
reading skill 19.
Check the answer by themselves
20.
Submitting the worksheet
19. Asking them to check answers by themselves. 20.
answer the question orally and making some corrections to their work if there are any mistakes.
or
21.
Answer the question orally
T - Ss -
To integrate reading with speaking
Ss -T
20 min
the students 22.
23.
Giving a chance to the students to ask some questions
22.
some questions if there are any difficulties.
Asking the students whether they like the way they have in the reading class or not.
23.
Expressing their opinions about the teaching learning process they have
24.
Making some notes
25.
Saying thank you and good bye.
24. Summarizing the lesson. 25. Teacher says farewell to the students.
·
Asking
Observation
:
oTo note the class situation during the activity, the teacher uses the teacher’s diary. oThe questionnaire is given to find out their attitude toward the strategy used. oThe result of post test is used to measure the weakness of the strategy used. o Comparing the result of the pre-test and the post-test in order to know whether there is an improvement of the students’ ability in reading comprehension through the use of SQRW strategy. ·
Reflections o
:
Analyzing the first meeting with steps of planning, action and the observation in order to decide whether to continue the investigation by conducting other cycle or stop.
4.5. Data Analysis The data analyze based on the result of the pre-test and the post-test conducted. It is analyzed in descriptive analysis. 1) Questionnaires, teacher’s diary and interview result are analyzed in qualitative descriptive. 2) The interval data are analyzed in quantitative descriptive, based on the students’ production of correct answers. Descriptive analysis means that the researcher notes score of the students in term of the
number of correct answer as well as the mean scores of the whole students in pre-test and the posttest in the cycle conducted. The score of each reading sub skill, finding out the main idea, finding out the specific information, finding out the word meaning and finding out the textual referent, will be calculated using the following formula :
a. To see the mean score of each reading skill, use the formula as follows:
b. 4.6. Success of Indicator Students’ level of mastery in reading comprehension is determined based on criteria proposed by Masidjo (1995:153) that will use PAP (Criterion Referenced Evaluation) type 1. Furthermore, Masidjo states that the students would be considered successful if the students’ score could attain at least 6.5 of the maximum score (10). It means the ideal passing score is at least 65%. This study will be stopped when 90% of the students, subject of this study, get 65 as the minimal score for their reading comprehension according to the SKBM (the passing criterion) of English in SMP Negeri 2 Tegallalang. The criteria could be seen in the following table.
90%
-
100%
=
excellent 80%
-
89%
=
very
-
75%
=
good
good 65 55
-
64%
=
sufficient Less than
55%
=
insufficient
It means: Excellent Very good
: those students who are able to answer the test items between 90% - 100% correctly. :
those students who are able to answer the test items between 80% - 89%
correctly Good Sufficient
: those students who are able to answer the test items between 65% - 79% correctly : those students who are able to answer the test items between 55% - 64% correctly
Insufficient
: those students who are able to answer the test items less than 55% correctly
References Adrienne L. Herrell and Michael Jordan. (2004) Fifty Strategies for Teaching English language learners. New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc. Diana Pulido and David Z. Hambrick. 2008. The Virtuous Article: Modeling Individual differences in L2 Reading and Vocabulary Development. http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl [http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl] . Gipe, J. P., 1991. Creative Reading Technique. 2nd Ed. USA : Gorsuch Scarisbrick Publishers. Herena et al, 2004. Materi Pelatihan Terintegrasi Bahasa Inggris, Jakarta: Depart ement Pendidikan Nasional Juniari, Ni Putu, 2005. The Application of PARTS Strategy to improve the achievement of the second year students in comprehending reading text. Unpublished Thesis, IKIP Negeri Singaraja. Kemmis, Stephen, and Robin Mc Taggart. 1988. The Action Research Planner. Deakin University. Melbourne. Kurikulum 2004 Standard Kompetensi Mata Pelajaran Bahasa , Jakarta: Departement Pendidikan Nasional Masidjo,Ing. 1995. Penilaian Pencapaian Hasil Belajar Siswa di Sekolah. Yogyakarta :Kanisius. Putri, Desak Ayu Eka. 2002. “Improving the Ability in Reading Comprehension Through SQ3R Technique of Class IIA Student Of SMU N 1 Bangli”. Skripsi Singaraja : IKIP Negeri Singaraja. Raharja, Dewa Nyoman Sami, 2004. Improving The first Year Student’s Reading through STDA Strategy. Singaraja : Skripsi IKIP Negeri Singaraja. Sandiani, Putu Sri. 2005, Using Song to Improve the Ability of the Second Year Students of SMP Bhaktiyasa Singaraja in Listening Comprehension in the Academic Year 2004/2005. Unpublished Thesis, STKIP Agama Hindu Singaraja. Tonjes,
et
http://cps.uswp.edu/courses/EDUC310/Texstruct/ narrativetext [http://cps.uswp.edu/courses/EDUC310/Texstruct/%20narrativetext] .
al. 1990,
Narrative
Text
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