USING AUTHENTIC MATERIALS TO IMPROVE GRADE VII STUDENTS’ READING SKILLS AT SMP NEGERI 3 TEMPEL IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR OF 2013/2014

Abstrak / Ringkasan

The objective of this study is to improve the reading skills of grade 7 in SMP N 3 Tempel using authentic materials in the academic year of 2013/2014.
This type of the study was action research. This study was conducted in two cycles. Each cycle consisted of planning, action and observation, and reflection. The subjects of the study were 32 students of class VIIA of SMP Negeri 3 Tempel in the academic year of 2013/2014.There were two types of data. They were qualitative data and quantitative data. The qualitative data were obtained by doing observation during the teaching and learning process and interviews with the students and the English teacher. The data were in the form of vignettes, and interview transcripts and photographs. The quantitative data were obtained from the scores of the pre-test and the post-test.
The results of the study showed that the implementation of authentic materials was able to improve the students’ reading skills. Based on the qualitative data, the students could find the gist of the texts more easily when they read the authentic texts. They were also interested in the learning activities because the learning activities used authentic materials which were different from the usual learning activities. They were able to memorize some vocabulary they did not know before more easily because they were trained to infer the meaning of the vocabulary from the texts. The quantitative data showed the mean value of the pre-test and the post-test increased after implementing the authentic materials. The mean value increased from 69.8 in the pre-test to 85 in the post-test.

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