Result of the Posttest

49 treatment, TPS technique appeared to bring about improvement in the students ‘ reading comprehension. The difficulties that they had in the previous meetings were gradually solved. After the series of treatment, the posttest was administered in the next meeting. The items in which the students had difficulty are summarized below. Table 11. Summary of the Students‘ Difficulties in the Posttest Reading Specification Items The number of students who have difficulties Determining main idea 4, 24, 29 12 students 40 Inference 2, 30 8 students 26.67 Reference 3, 7, 12, 13, 16, 18, 22, 28 8 students 26.67 Finding detailed information 1, 5, 6, 9, 11, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 23, 27 12 students 40 Vocabulary 8, 10, 21, 25, 26 10 students 33.33 Taking into account the percentages of students who have difficulties in the pretest and posttest, we can deduce increases or improvements concerning the students‘ ability in the reading comprehension components. The table below sums up these increases. Table 12. Increases or Improvements in the Students‘ Ability Concerning Reading Comprehension Components Components Pretest Posttest Increase Improvement Determining main idea 40 70 30 Inference 26.67 33.33 6.66 Reference 26.67 33.33 6.66 Finding detailed information 40 60 20 Vocabulary 33.33 50 16.67 50 The table indicates that there is an increase of the number of students who responded correctly for each reading componentsafter the application of TPS technique.The largest increase was in terms of determining main idea, i.e. 30. This occurred because of the role of TPS in raising the students‘ awareness that the main idea is commonly found in the first sentence of the paragraph. On the contrary, the components of finding inference and finding reference were the ones with the least increases, 6.66 respectively. It was due to the fact that reference and inference can be easily found in the text as the main ideas. Referring to the research findings,it can be inferred that TPStechnique providesa worthy contribution to the accomplishment of the teaching-learning of reading comprehension, particularly in terms of narrative text. This technique can help English language teachers to build students‘ ability in reading comprehension. Henceforth, it can be concluded that there is a significant increase of the students‘ reading comprehension ability after the application of TPS technique at the second gradeofMTsN 1 TanjungKarang, mainly in terms of determining main idea and finding detailed information.