THE USE OF AUTHENTIC TEXTS TO IMPROVE THE READING ABILITY OF THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS OF SMP MUHAMMADIYAH KERTEK, WONOSOBO

Abstrak / Ringkasan

The objective of the study is to improve the reading comprehension skills of the eighth grade students of SMP Muhammadiyah Kertek, Wonosobo through the use of authentic texts. The study is attempted to solve some problems related to the students’ reading comprehension skills that was categorized low.
This study is an action research study. The steps of this research were reconnaissance, planning, conducting actions and observation, and doing reflection. This study consisted of two cycles. The participants of the research were the researcher, the English teacher, and the students of class VIII B of SMP Muhammadiyah Kertek, Wonosobo. There were two forms of the data in this study. They were qualitative data and quantitative data. The qualitative data were collected through classroom observations and interviews. Meanwhile, the quantitative data were collected by means of the pre-test and the post-test. The validity of the data was obtained by applying democratic validity, outcome validity, process validity, catalytic validity, and dialogic validity.
The findings of the study showed that the use of authentic texts for teaching reading successfully improved the students’ reading comprehension skills. The use of authentic texts could give the students motivation to read. They were curious to the content of the texts and then they were interested in the topic of the texts. The use of authentic texts was useful to improve the students’ vocabulary mastery. They promoted a lot of new vocabulary items that the students never taught before. The authentic texts became model for the students of using English naturally for real communication. In addition, the implementation of authentic texts combined with reading strategies, reading aloud and using dictionary made the students became active in learning reading. The result of the test showed that the use of authentic texts to improve the students’ reading ability was successful. The scores indicated that there were improvements from the result of the students’ pre-test and post-test. The students’ pre-test mean score was 46.9 and it improved to 58.5 in the post-test.

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