Improving the Students’ Reading Comprehension in Narrative

Improving the Students’ Reading Comprehension in Narrative - The topic of this study is teaching reading comprehension in narrative by using Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA) strategy. The objectives of the study are to know how the DRTA strategy can be applied in the classroom and to know whether the DRTA strategy improves the students’ reading skill in reading comprehension of narrative.
reading comprehension

An action research was conducted to achieve the objectives of the study. The subject of the study was the eleventh grade students of SMA N 01 Tayu Pati in the academic year of 2010/2011. Two cycles were conducted in this action research. Thus, there were several meetings during the action research. The first meeting was pre-test, second meeting was cycle 1, third meeting was cycle 2, and the fourth meeting was post-test. 

The DRTA strategy was applied in the cycles as the treatment with pictures and narrative text. The students were actively involved in reading the text because they predicted predictions and read to confirm their predictions. The data analysis used test, questionnaire, and observation.

The test used for measuring students’ progression in before and after the DRTA strategy were conducted and it was consist of pre-test and post-test. The questionnaire was given to get some additional information from the students’ responses in applying the DRTA strategy as media in teaching reading comprehension narrative, it was given after the students did the post-test.

Besides, the observation was also done along the research to observe what happened in the class. The students’ mastery in reading comprehension in narrative with DRTA strategy could be seen from the average of the pre-test score (63.14) and post-test score (85.74).

According to the result of the questionnaire, most of the students said that the teaching learning using DRTA strategy could help them in reading comprehension of narrative. Besides, the pictures can improve students’ motivation in teaching-learning process.

It can be concluded that DRTA can be an effective strategy as an alternative technique in teaching reading comprehension in narrative because it can improve the students’ achievement in comprehending a text narrative. Therefore, it is hoped this study would be useful for teachers and students in teaching-learning process.

Moreover this research can be useful for future research for example in Physics lesson about vectors, force, and motion or in demonstration English lesson about short story.