Validity and Reliability RESEARCH METHOD

sentence to the students. This strategy did not help students much in comprehending the text they read. To figure out the problems from students’ perspectives, the researcher also conducted interviews with some students of Grade VIII A. The problems were shown by this following interview transcript. In reference to the transcript above, student’s lack of vocabulary directly caused students’ low reading comprehension. In order to solve the problem, the strategy used by the teacher was by translating word by word to the students. However, that strategy did not help them much. It was proven by the fact that students could not comprehend the English text well. They still had difficulties in 4.2 R : Dek apa kesulitan terbesarmu dalam memahami teks bahasa inggris? What is your main difficulty in comprehending English texts? S : Kata-katanya banyak yang susah yang enggak tau artinya mbak. Ya kan jadi enggak paham textnya mbak There are many difficult words that I dont know the meaning yet. Therefore, I find it difficult to comprehend the text R : Oh begitu, kalau mencari main idea, atau topik teks itu gitu susah nggak? I see, how about finding main ideas or finding the topic of the text, is it difficult for you? S : Iya susah lah mbak, itu kan aku harus paham dulu artinya kan mbak .Of course it is difficult for me. I have to know the meaning of the words of the text first . R : Biasanya apa yang dilakukan bu guru untuk membantu kalian memahami teks? what usually the teacher do to help you comprehend the text? S : Biasanya sih langsung tanya kata-kata yang tidak tahu. Kemudian nanti diartikan sama ibuknya. Usually, I directly asks to her. Then she will transtlate the word Int-225 March 2015, answering comprehension question related to find the topic and main idea, to find stated and unstated details from the text, and etc. In the reconnaissance phase, the researcher also conducted a classroom observation when the teaching and learning process was running. The observation revealed the several problems during teaching learning process of reading. First the teacher still used a conventional way in teaching and learning process of reading. In order to help students comprehend the text, she read the text aloud, translated the difficult parts to the students, and asked students to do some tasks. In this situation, the teacher became the centre of reading activity. Students only listened to the teacher’s explanation and she would not explain more if there were no questions from the students. Second, the media used by the teacher were copy of LKS Lembar Kerja Siswa , in English known as students’ worksheets, which did not belong to the students. It was considered as a problem since the students could not study it before and after the lesson. The third proble m was students’ misbehaviour during the class. They did not show their enthusiasm and did not actively engage in asking questions and giving their opinions. The last problem was students’ lack of comprehension of the content of the text. They still had difficulties in answering comprehension questions, especially in finding main idea, finding stated and unstated details of the text, and identifying generic structure of the texts. Besides interviewing the English teacher and the students and observing the class, the researcher also administered a reading test before the actions. The test consists of 40 items of the objective type. The items measured students’ ability related to the macro skills and micro skills of reading in junior high school which consist of finding the main idea and topic of the text, identifying stated and unstated details, deducting the meaning of unfamiliar lexical items, identifying references, identifying communicative function of the text, and identifying generic structure of the tex t. The students’ score of pre-test were analysed as follows. Table 2 . The Result of Grade VIII A Students’ Pre-Test Statistics Pre-Test N Valid 34 Missing Mean 62.529 Median 63.000 Mode 55.0 Minimum 45.0 Maximum 83.0 With regard to the abov e table, it can be concluded that the students’ reading comprehension was categorized low. The average score of Grade VIII A students was 62.5 which were lower than the passing grade of English which was 75. Only five students that achieved the passing grade with the highest score were 83. The average score of Grade VIII A was quite low compared with the try-out of Grade VIII D students which was 73 with the highest score was 88 as shown in the following table.