Step 4: Having students read independently. They are encouraged to write the
answers just using key words while the teacher is questioning such as ‘who is the main character? What is he like? Where does the story take place? etc.’ then the
teacher gives them praise for appropriately identifying the story mapping elements.
Step 5: Asking students to complete story map worksheet on theirs after students
use story mapping independently. Then, the teacher checks students’ response and
conference individually with those students requiring additional guidance and support.
Step 6: Giving students an evaluation. It is necessary to check their reading
comprehension of a story using a printed test to gain working individually.
D. Relevant Study
To support the study, the writer searched for the previous relevant study. The first study was conducted by
Grunke, et. al. entitled, “Analyzing the Effects of Story Mapping on the Reading Comprehension of Children with Low Intellectual
Abilities ”. In their study, they were using an Experimental design. The participants
of this study was three 5
th
grade students from a regular education public school and three 8
th
grade students from a school for children with learning difficulties. The boys were 11 and 13 years old and the girls were 10, 11, 14 and 14 years old.
They were identified having high difficulties in comprehending text. They were categorized into the lowest quartile. In this study, there were 18 narrative texts from
three German story books which were selected. Then, all of them were altered. The text was standardized into 150 words. To teach female and male students, they
followed a procedure by Idol, those are: Modelling phase, leading phase and testing phase. The result of the study showed that story mapping extremely effective. All
participants were able to dramatically increase the number of correct responses in the continuously administered probes from M= 3.88 during baseline to M=8.97
during intervention.
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Grunke, et. al., Analyzing the Effects of Story Mapping on the Reading Comprehension of Children with Low Intellectual Abilities. Learning Disabilities: A Contemporary Journal 112,
51-64, 2013
Then, the second study was conducted by Joanna Franciscone. The title is “The Effectiveness of Using Story Mapping as a Supplemental Tool to Improve
Reading Comprehension ”. She conducted the study by using story mapping
technique to improve students’ reading comprehension at inner city Catholic K-8 Elementary School. The participant of this study were 34 students consisting 19
female and 15 male students. This study conducted for 6 weeks. During this study, the students read a different story each week. Then, they completed story maps after
reading a story. The result of this study showed that most students understood the story especially week 5 in a mean of 3 and standard deviation of 0.
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E. Conceptual Framework
From the explanation above, it can be explained that reading comprehension is an activity of understanding and constructing meaning from written language and
combining it into readers’ prior knowledge which is influenced by some factors such as readers’ vocabulary mastery, readers’ background knowledge and
experience and readers’ ability to process the knowledge into their memories.
Readers can comprehend a text easier if there is a connection between what they are reading and what they already know.
Narrative text is a story presented in chronological order that consists of some components including problems and problem solving of which purpose is to
entertain the reader. The characteristic of narrative text is orientation, complication and resolution. Story mapping is a technique in teaching using a graphic or semantic
visual representation of a story. It is clear the definition above has relation between one to another. Thus, it can be effective to teach students reading comprehension
of narrative text by using story mapping since both are telling a story. It can be supported by many researchers who found story mapping technique is effective to
comprehend readers’ understanding in reading of narrative text. In addition, since narrative text tells about fiction story, it will make students more interested and
motivated in reading a text. Their imagination will take a part of comprehending
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Joanna Franciscone, The Effectiveness of Using Story Mapping as a Supplemental Tool to Improve Reading Comprehension. ProQuest LLC, 2008
