classroom action research

(CLASSROOM ACTION RESEARCH) Reading Comprehension Through SQRW

PROPOSAL

(CLASSROOM ACTION RESEARCH)

Title : Improving the Achievement of the Second Years Students of SMP Negeri 2 Tegallalang in Reading Comprehension Through SQRW

in Academic Year 2009/2010.

2. Introduction :

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 2 Tegallalang in finding out the main idea of reading text

through SQRW strategy.

2) to improve the achievement of the second year students of SMP Negeri 2 Tegallalang in finding out the specific information of

reading text through SQRW strategy.

3) to improve the achievement of the second year students of SMP Negeri 2 Tegallalang in finding 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 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 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.

4.3. Research Instrument

Some instruments use to obtain the data are:

1) Reading task

Reading tasks are used in each session during the action of the cycle.

2) Test

There are two kinds of test administered in this study, those are pre-test and post-test. The pre-test 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.

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 :

o Making a teaching scenario for each meeting.

o Preparing the reading material will be used in the exercise and post test.

o Preparing the teaching media (pictures, photos and slides)

o Preparing the work sheet.

o Preparing the test.

o Preparing the observation instruments ( teacher’s diary and questionnaire)

Action :

Steps in the teaching and learning process

o Pre-activity

Engagement (gives short brainstorming related to the topic for focusing the students’ attention).

o whilst-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)

o Post-activity

- Assessment

Based on the action procedures above, the researcher can construct a teaching scenario as follows:

ACTIVITIESAIM INTERACTION

TIME

ALLOTMENTTEACHER STUDENTS

Pre-activity.1. greets the

students.

2. check the students attendant

1. Responding greeting

2. Listening and responding

To get the students ready for the class

T - SsSs -T 5 min


TIME


3. check the students readiness for the class.

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. asked the students some questions related to the topic orally

3. Prepare their stationeries

- Look at the picture.

- Talk about the picture

5. predict what the text telling about.

6. answer the questions orally

To generate students’ interest

To predict topic To create an

interest on the topic and content

To relate topic with Ss’ Prior knowledge.

To give an awareness of nature and structure of text

T - SsSs -T

T - SsSs -T

T - SsSs -T

10 min

Whilst-activity7. Distributing the

reading text to students with the question list.

7. take the text T – Ss 65 min


TIME


8. check the students understanding of the questions

9. Read the text.

10. Read the text for the second time.

11. Ask the students to read the text and note the difficult words, phrases.

12. ask the students to answer the questions individually.

13. ask the students to check their answers with their neighbors.

14. check the answers together orally

8. Ask if they don’t understand the questions yet.

9. Listening to the teacher

10. Repeat after the teacher

11. Read the text silently and note the difficult words, phrases they did not understand.

12. Answer the questions

13. Check their answer with their neighbors.

To train Ss to see their purpose of reading

To train Ss’ listening skill

To train Ss for the pronunciation

To integrate reading with speaking and note keeping

To scan and skim for meaning

To train Ss get information from text.

To integrate reading with writing.

To train Ss to share their

T - SsSs -T

T - Ss

T - Ss

T - SsSs - Ss

individually


TIME


15. Scoring their answers.

16. Submitting the students’ work sheets.

17. Conducting post test at the end of this cycle.

14. answer the question orally and making some corrections to their work if there are any mistakes.

15. Write the score they get on their worksheets.

16. Submitting the work sheets.

17. take the test

opinions or ideas.

To integrate reading with speaking and writing.

To train Ss to be fair

Ss - Ss

T - SsSs -T

individually

T - SsSs -T

T - SsSs –T

Post activity18. Giving students

enough time to do the task.

18. Doing the task To measure the

students’ ability

Individually 20 min


TIME


19. Asking them to check answers by themselves.

20. Submitting the students’ work sheets.

21. Check the answers together with the students

22. Giving a chance to the students to ask some questions

23. Asking the students whether they like the way they have in the reading class or not.

24. Summarizing the lesson.

25. Teacher says farewell to the students.

19. Check the answer by themselves

20. Submitting the worksheet

21. Answer the question orally

22. Asking some questions if there are any difficulties.

23. Expressing their opinions about the teaching learning process they have

24. Making some notes

25. Saying thank you and good bye.

in reading skill

To integrate reading with speaking T - Ss

Ss -T

Observation :

o To note the class situation during the activity, the teacher uses the teacher’s diary.

o The questionnaire is given to find out their attitude toward the strategy used.

o The 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 post-test 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 good

65 - 75% = good

55 - 64% = sufficient

Less than 55% = insufficient

It means:

Excellent : those students who are able to answer the test items between 90% - 100% correctly.

Very good : those students who are able to answer the test items between 80% - 89% correctly

Good : those students who are able to answer the test items between 65% - 79% correctly

Sufficient : 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 . 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 al. 1990, Narrative Text http://cps.uswp.edu/courses/EDUC310/Texstruct/ narrativetext.

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