on the eighth students’ attendance list, there are 36 students in VIII A, 36 students
in VIII B, 34 students in VIII C, 35 students in VIII D and 34 students in VIII E. So, there are 175 students of the eighth grade classes. In this research, intact group
comparison was used because the two classes as the experimental and the control groups were chosen randomly. The researcher decided to take one class as the
experimental group and one class as the control group as the respondents of this research.
3.4 Operational Definitions of the Key Terms
The operational definition is a brief discussion about some terms related to the topics of the research. The terms that require operational definition are
skimming technique, scanning technique, recount text and reading comprehension achievement.
3.4.1 Skimming Technique
The skimming technique deals with reading quickly to get the general information from the text read. To skim a text, the students do not read all the
words in the text. They only read the main ideas and look for the most important ideas in the text. The main objective of skimming technique is to understand the
central idea of the text. This technique works well with the students to help them if they have lots of materials in limited time.
In this research, the experimental students were asked to use the skimming technique to find the general information from the text.
3.4.2 Scanning Technique
The scanning technique deals with the ability to read selectively to locate specific information from the text read. The students do not need to read every
word from the beginning up to the end of the text, but they skip some words and try to find the specific information from the key words.
In this research, the experimental students were asked to use scanning technique to find specific information from the text.
3.4.3 Recount Text
The genre of the text that was used in this research was a recount text. This text is a kind of text which retells past events or experiences in the order they
happened. The purpose of the recount text is to inform the reader about what had happened in the past.
In this research, the recount text was used as the reading materials for both the experimental and the control group.
3.4.4 Reading Comprehension Achievement
Reading comprehension achievement in this research dealt with the results of reading comprehension test that showed
the students’ ability in comprehending the recount text both in finding general information and specific information of
the recount text. Th e students’ reading comprehension achievement was shown by
the students’ scores of the reading comprehension test as posttest after they were taught reading by using skimming and scanning techniques for the experimental
group and discussion technique for the control group.
3.5 Data Collection Methods
