(CLASSROOM ACTION RESEARCH) Reading Comprehension Through SQRW

PROPOSAL

(CLASSROOM ACTION RESEARCH)

1. 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.

Cycle Diagram
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.

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 :

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:

ACTIVITIES

AIM

INTERACTION

TIME ALLOTMENT

TEACHER

STUDENTS

Pre-activity.

1. greets the students.

2. check the students attendant

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

1. Responding greeting

2. Listening and responding

3. Prepare their stationeries

- To get the students ready for the class

T - Ss

Ss -T

5 min

4. - 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 - Ss

Ss -T

T - Ss

Ss -T
T - Ss

Ss -T

10 min

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.

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

15. Scoring their answers.

16. Submitting the students’ work sheets.

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

7. take the text

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.

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

- 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 opinions or ideas.

- To integrate reading with speaking and writing.

- To train Ss to be fair
T – Ss

T - Ss

Ss -T

T - Ss

T - Ss
T - Ss

Ss - Ss

individually

Ss - Ss

T - Ss

Ss -T
individually

T - Ss

Ss -T

T - Ss

Ss –T

65 min

Post activity

18. Giving students enough time to do the task.

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.

18. Doing the task

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.

- To measure the students’ ability in reading skill

- To integrate reading with speaking

Individually

T - Ss

Ss -T

20 min

· 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
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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
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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.
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Sandiani, Putu Sri. 2005, Using Song to Improve the Ability of the Second Year Students of SMP
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