THE EFFECT OF DIRECTED READING THINKING ACTIVITY STRATEGY ON STUDENTS READING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT IN REPORT TEXT.

THE EFFECT OF DIRECTED READING THINKING
ACTIVITY STRATEGY ON STUDENTS’ READING
COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT
IN REPORT TEXT

A THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement
for the Degree of Sarjana Pendidikan

By:

JUNPITA SINAGA
Registration Number. 2113121036

ENGLISH AND LITERATURE DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ARTS
STATE UNIVERSITY OF MEDAN
2015

 
 


 

 
 

 

 
 

 

LEMBAR PENGESAHAN PANITIA UJIAN
Skripsi ini diajukan oleh: Junpita Sinaga, NIM. 2113121036
Jurusan Bahasa dan Sastra Inggris
Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris Strata Satu
Fakultas Bahasa dan Seni
Universitas Negeri Medan


Dinyatakan telah memenuhi syarat
untuk memperoleh gelar
Sarjana Pendidikan

Panitia Ujian
 

Medan,

September 2015

Ketua,

Sekretaris,

Prof. Dr. Hj. Sumarsih, M. Pd. 
NIP. 19581021 198303 2 002

 
 


 
 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First and the foremost, the writer would like to express her deepest gratitude
to Jesus Christ for His blessings, for gracing her health and opportunity which has
enabled her to complete this thesis. She realized that she would never have been able
to complete it without the love of Him, who sent her the guidance of her lecturers,
helps from her friends, and supports from her family and her one. This thesis has
been written in fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Sarjana Pendidikan of
the English Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Medan.
In order to finish and complete this thesis, the writer was helped by many
people through their guidances, supports, prays, love, comments, and suggestions.
The writer would like to express her gratitude to:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.

Prof. Dr. Syawal Gultom, M. Pd., the Rector of State University of
Medan.
Dr. Isda Pramuniati, M.Hum., the Dean of Faculty of Languages
and Arts.
Prof. Dr. Hj. Sumarsih, M.Pd., the Head of English and Literature
Department.
Dra. Meisuri, M.A., the secretary of English and Literature
Department and also her Thesis Reviewer.
Nora Ronita Dewi, S. Pd., S.S., M. Hum., the Head of English
Education Study Program.
Drs. Willem Saragih, Dipl. Appl., M.Pd., her Thesis Consultant- 1.

Mahmud Layan Hutasuhut, S. Pd., M. Hum., her Thesis
Consultant- 2.
Dr. Rahmad Husein, M. Ed., her Thesis Reviewer.
Drs. Lidiman Sahat Martua Sinaga, M. Hum, her Thesis Reviewer.
Dra. Yunita Agnes Sianipar, M. Hum., her Academic Consultant.
Antinnaria Simalango, S. Pd, the Headmaster of SMP Swasta
Advent Medan.
Elvita Siahaan, S.Pd., the English Teacher of SMP Swasta Advent
Medan.
Her beloved father, mother and family, Sabar Sinaga and Rista
Nainggolan, for their great endless and pure love, prayers,
motivations, mental and financial supports; her lovely sisters and

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14.
15.

16.


17.

brother, k’Dewi, k’Dewantry, k’Iyut Verawati, k’Alju, Sumarni,
Sapta, Anastasia for their supports, love, and care.
Her beloved man, Yunus Andreas Simangunsong for his prayers,
love, kindness, supports, care and sometimes challenges.
Pdt. J.L Damanik, M. Min and family who continuously prayed for
her in the morning with the result that there were so many unexpected
miracles happened until the end of this journey.
Her friends, all Reguler Dik C 2011 for togetherness, share and
motivations throughout four years. Especially for Masdoharni, for
being a phlegmatic friend who persuades her not to much worry about
the life, she also thanks her for the time they have crazy laugh about
the trials of this long journey. The other unforgettable one, her
twinmate, Laura Elisabeth Hutapea, for sharing her laugh, care,
supports, suggestions, and even her money. Fitri Mardiana Siregar,
her very kind friend who has kindly helped her and warned her to give
a serious attention in revising some important things in completing this
long and complicated administration. Ade Cristalina, Nina Tiya Hara,
Merry, k’ Masdiana, Helena, Marta and other unmentioned kind

friends.
Her friends under consulted of Drs. Willem Saragih, Dippl., Appl., M.
Pd, they are Ester, Mentari, Putra, Nomita, Jetty, and b’ Gokhlas,
for togetherness, share and supports.

The writer realized that the content of this thesis was not perfect, so she
warmly welcomed any constructive suggestions that will improve the quality of this
thesis. She hoped it would be useful for those who are interested in this field of study.

Medan, September, 2015
The writer,

Junpita Sinaga
2113121036

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ABSTRACT

Sinaga, Junpita. 2113121036. The Effect of Directed Reading Thinking

Activity Strategy on Students’ Reading Comprehension Achievement in
Report Text. A Thesis. Faculty of Languages and Arts. State University of
Medan. 2015.
This study was conducted to investigate the effect of Directed Reading Thinking
Activity Strategy on Students’ Reading Comprehension Achievement in Report
Text.. It was an experimental research. The subject was students of Grade VIII,
Junior High School (Sekolah Menengah Pertama) SMP Swasta Advent 1 Medan,
which consisted of 90 students. The research was divided into two groups:
experimental and control groups. The instrument used to collect the data was
multiple-choice test. To obtain the reliability of the test, the writer applied Kuder
Richardson 21 formula. The result of the reliability was 0.77, and it was found
that the test was reliable. The data were analyzed by using t-test formula. The
analysis showed that the scores of the students in the experimental group were
significantly higher than the scores of the students in the control group at the level
of significant  = 0.05 with the degree of freedom (df) 58, t-observed value 4. 28
> t-table value 2.00. The findings indicated that applying Directed Reading
Thinking Activity strategy significantly affected the students’ reading
comprehension in report text. It means that, English teachers are suggested to use
Directed Reading Thinking Activity in order to improve students’ reading
comprehension achievement in report text.

Key Words: Directed Reading Thinking Activity Strategy, Reading Comprehension

i

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
ABSTRACT ...............................................................................................

i

ACKNOWLEDMENT ..............................................................................

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS..........................................................................

iv

LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................


vi

LIST OF APPENDIXES...........................................................................

vii

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTIO
A. The Background of the Study ............................................................
B. The Problem of the study...................................................................
C. The Objective of Study ......................................................................
D. The Scope of the Study......................................................................
E. The Significant of the Study ..............................................................

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5
5
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CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF LITERATURE
A. Theoretical Framework ..........................................................................
1. Students’ achievement .......................................................................
2. Language Skills ..................................................................................
3. Genre ..................................................................................................
4. Strategy...............................................................................................
5. Assesment for Reading.......................................................................
B. Conceptual Framework ..........................................................................
C. Hypothesis ..............................................................................................

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24
26
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CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHOD
A. Research Design .....................................................................................
B. Population and Sample ...........................................................................
1. Population..........................................................................................
2. Sample ................................................................................................
C. The Instrument for Collecting Data ........................................................
D. The Procedures of Research ...................................................................
1. Pre-Test ..............................................................................................
2. Treatment............................................................................................
3. Post-test ..............................................................................................
E. Scoring the Test ......................................................................................

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34
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35
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F. Validity and Reliability ...........................................................................
1. Validity of the Test .............................................................................
2. Reliability of the test ..........................................................................
G. Technique for Analyzing Data ...............................................................
H. Statistical Hypothesis .............................................................................

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CHAPTER IV : DATA ANALYSIS AND RESEARCH FINDING
A. Data .................................................................................................
B. Data Analysis ..................................................................................
C. Research Finding.............................................................................

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CHAPTER V : CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
A. Conclusion.......................................................................................
B. Suggestion .......................................................................................

45
46

REFERENCES ..........................................................................................

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APPENDICES ...........................................................................................

49

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LIST OF TABLES
Table 2.2 Teaching Procedures on Lecturing Method ..........................

23

Table 3.1 Experimental Research design ................................................

29

Table 3.2 Table of Specification ...............................................................

31

Table 3.3 Teaching Procedure of the Experimental Group ..................

32

Table 3.4 Teaching procedures for Control Group ..............................

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LIST OF APPENDICES
APPENDIX A result of pre-test and post-test in control class.................

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APPENDIX B result of pre-test and post-test in experimental class ......

50

APPENDIX C the score of realibility of the test .......................................

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APPENDIX D the calculation of the t-test ................................................

53

APPENDIX E t- table .................................................................................

56

APPENDIX F lesson plan for experimental & control class ....................

58

APPENDIX G reading test & answer keys ................................................

77

APPENDIX H students’ worksheet ...........................................................

90

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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

A. The Background of Study
When life exists, language exists. Language has a very important role in
human life. Everybody uses a language to convey his or her ideas, feelings, and
thoughts to the listeners or other people in spoken or written way.
Today, we live in a globalization era. That is why a universal language
connecting all people around the world is needed. English is one of the most common
languages used by people to communicate with other people whose native languages
are different. English is not only used as a communication tool but also used as a
language of science, technology and information and finally there is a great demand
in the workforce that requires the jobseekers in a certain position to be able to speak
and write English fluently and correctly. As an international language that has a very
big influence, English is very important at present to be learnt especially for the
students as the Indonesian coming generation so that they will be able to face this
globalization era well .
In teaching English, the students are intended to master four language skills.
They are listening, speaking, reading and writing. As one of the four language skills,
reading holds an important role in learning. By reading, people are able to get a lot of
information from printed materials and texts. According to Grabe and Stoller (2002),

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reading is a way to get information from the printed page and interpret the
information appropriately.
Burns (1984) also quotes that reading is a thinking process, that is why
reading is intended not only the students can read the printed page as graphic
symbols, but also they are supposed to be able to comprehend the text itself by
thinking about the meaning or information given by the text. Unfortunately, the facts
are different. While conducting teaching practice in SMA Negeri 1 Serbajadi in 2014,
the writer observed that most of the students in Senior High School still got
difficulties to comprehend the text. The students did not understand what the text was
about. Most of them became passive learners because they did not understand what
the words mean. Besides, they were not creative in answering the questions because
they could not restate the ideas by their own words which is needed in answering the
essay test. As a consequence, learning reading comprehension made them bored and
teaching reading process could not run well. Furthermore, the writer found some
cases when she observed an English teacher who was teaching reading in class at
Grade VIII SMP Swasta Advent Medan. Reading class seemed like translation class.
The students were asked to read the whole text, underline difficult words, then
translate it into Indonesian and finally answer the questions related to the text without
using their prior knowledge nor predicting the content of the text nor summarizing
the important events in the text. The writer also asked the students’ view about
reading class. Among 30 students, 20 of them said that they hate reading class; they

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did not understand what they were reading was about. They said that reading class
was a boring activity which took a long time. They had to translate all the unknown
words in order to understand the text.
Thus, to overcome the problems above, the teacher should consider the most
effective strategy to improve the students’ reading comprehension in reading the text.
There are some alternative strategies that often used in improving the students’
reading comprehension, such as: Reciprocal Teaching Strategy (Palincsar and Brown,
1984), Semantic Mapping Strategy (Pittleman and Heimlich, 1986), Experience-TextRelationship Method (Au,K.H, 1977), Story Pyramid Strategy (Bailey and Clire,
2001), and Directed Reading Thinking Activity (Russel and Stauffer, 1998).
In this study, the alternative strategy that was used in teaching reading
comprehension is Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA) strategy which is
developed by Russel Stauffer (1969). This strategy is a plan for directing students’
and encouraging them to think as they read and make predictions then check their
accuracy. DRTA is an effective strategy for teaching reading comprehension because
it helps students set reading purpose by making predictions, read more actively and
enthusiastically and remember more information from what they have read.
Furthermore, Duke and Pearson (2002) state that DRTA strategy teaches students
how to self-monitor as they read and learn, which leads to an increase in attention,
comprehension, and achievement.

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Based on the previous research which was conducted by Kusumawardani
(2012), there was improvement of the students’ achievement in reading descriptive
text which was taught by using Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA) strategy.
And the average score of second meeting increased after teaching learning activity
used DRTA strategy. Suwandi (2013) who had conducted an experimental research
found that the ability of reading comprehension on a group of students who are taught
by DRTA learning model is better compared to the group of students who are taught
using PQRST and DRA learning model.
Furthermore, Al Odwan (2012) has proved that using directed reading
thinking activity can improve students’ reading comprehension because these
activities is rich with more communicative tasks and consequently provided students
with new concepts, ideas, suggestions, styles of thinking as well as opinions. Yadzani
(2014) proved that DRTA was an effective strategy to improve students’ reading
comprehension because the nature of DRTA which entirely involves students during
the reading process and helped them to be critical to their learning.
Pasaribu (2013) also conducted a research about Improving Students’
Reading Comprehension through Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA). She
concluded that DRTA was an effective method to improve students’ reading
comprehension in narrative text, and also made the students became more active and
more enthusiastic in learning reading comprehension. Based on the explanation given
above, the writer was sure that DRTA strategy would be effective to help the students
to solve their difficulties in reading comprehension.

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There are some kinds of genre namely recount, report, hortatory exposition,
analytical exposition, spoof, news item, anecdote, narrative, procedure, discussion,
review and explanation. In this study, the writer focused on reading report text as a
subject on learning material. The writer considered that although the previous
researchers have conducted the DRTA in teaching reading narrative and descriptive
text and achieving a good result, but in this study the writer tried to use DRTA in
teaching reading report text, because there is significant difference about the contents
for each genre of the text.
Therefore, this study was designed to identify the effect of applying Directed
Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA) strategy on students’ achievement in reading
comprehension in report text.

B. The Problem of Study
Based on the background of the study, the research problem was formulated
as follows:
“Is there any significant effect of applying Directed Reading Thinking Activity
(DRTA) strategy on students’ reading comprehension achievement in report text?”

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C. The Objective of Study
The objective of the research was to find out the effect of Directed Reading
Thinking Activity (DRTA) strategy on the students’ reading comprehension in report
text in SMP Swasta Advent Medan.

D. The Scope of Study
According to Great and Wignell (1994:192), text is devided into several types
that known as genre; they are spoof, recount, report, analytical exposition, news item,
anecdote, narrative procedure, descriptive, hortatory exposition, explanation,
discussion, reviews. This study was focused on reading report text by applying
Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA) strategy. The researcher used report text
and focused on four levels of reading comprehension, such as literal comprehension,
interpretative comprehension, critical comprehension, and creative comprehension.

E. The Significance of Study
This study which was focused on the application of Directed Reading
Thinking Activity (DRTA) strategy on students’ reading comprehension in report
text, was expected to give some benefits. Theoretically, this study was expected to
enhance the literature for those who are interested in the further research related to
the study and practically expected to give contribution on the effectiveness of reading
comprehension, both for the students and the English teachers. This study was useful

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for the students who want to develop their reading skill by applying DRTA. It was
also useful for the teachers to improve their ability in teaching reading by adopting
Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA) strategy.

REFERENCES
Al Odwan. 2012. The Effect of the Directed Reading Thinking Activity through
Cooperative Learning on English Secondary Stage Students’ Reading
Comprehension in Jordan. International Journal of Humanities and Social
Science Vol. 2 No. 16 [Special Issue – August 2012]. Retrieved from
http://www.indiana.edu/~l517/DRTA.html
Arikunto, S. 1993. Prosedur: Suatu Pendekatan Praktik. Jakarta: Bina Aksara.
Ary, Donald. 2002. Introduction to Research In Education. (7th ed.). New York:
Thomson Learning
Brown, H. D .2004. Language assessment: Principles and Classroom practices. New
York: Longman.
Elizabeth. S. Angaluki, Michael.L.2003. Teaching Reading. UNESCO: International
bureau of education.
Grabe, W.& Stoller, F.L.2002. Teaching and Researching Reading. Harlow: Pearson
Education.
Hornby, AS. 2000. Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary of Current English.
Oxford: Oxford University
Istarani. 2012. 58 Model Pembelajaran Inovatif. Medan; Media Persada
Kusumawardani, Inggit. 2012. The Implementation of DRTA Method to Improve
Students’ Reading Comprehension Ability of The 11th Grade Science 3 at
Sma N 1 Klirong in The Academic Year of 2012/201. Uploaded on
http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/drta/
Limbong, Deva. 2010. Improving Students’ Achievement in Reading Comprehension
Through Directed Reading Thinnking Activity (DRTA). Unpublished
Nuttal,C. 1982.Teaching Reading Skills in a foreign Language. London: Heinemann.
Pardiyono. 2008. Pasti Bisa! Teaching Genre-Based Writing. Mengajar Menulis
berbasis genre secara efesien. Yogyakarta: Andi
Pasaribu, Vivi. 2013. Improving Students’ Reading Comprehension Through
Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA). Unpublished

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Sihombing, Ida. 2013, Improving students’ achievement in writing advertisement by
using modeling the way strategy. Unpublished
Sirait, Dahlia. 2011. Improving Students’ Achievement in Reading Comprehension
by Using Directed Reading Thinking Activity Technique. Unpublished
Stauffer, R. G. (1976). Teaching reading as a thinking process. New York: Harper
& Row.
Suwandi, S., Nurkamto, J., Slamet, Y., & Somadayo, S. 2013. The Effect of Learning
Model Drta (Directed Reading Thingking Activity) Toward Students’ Reading
Comprehension Ability Seeing from Their Reading Interest. Journal of
Education and Practice ISSN 2222-1735 (Paper) ISSN 2222-288X (Online)
Vol.4,
No.8,
201.
Retrieved
from
http://www.coperation.org/pages/cl_methods.html
Yadzani, M. 2014. The Explicit Instruction of Reading Strategies: Directed Reading
Thinking Activity vs. Guided Reading Strategies. International Journal of
Applied Linguistics & English Literature ISSN 2200-3592 (Print),ISSN 22003452 (Online) Vol. 4 No. 3; May 2015. Retrieved from
http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.4n.3p.53
http://e-englishlab.blogspot.com/2011/01/report-text.html. Accessed on April
20th, 2015
http://literacystrategies.wordpress/drta/. Accessed on March 10th, 2015
http://sh4ring-inform4tion.blogspot.com/2013/03/jenis-jenis-teks
bahasa-inggris.html

dalam-