This research, however, does not improve all of the skills micro and macro skills of reading at once. It merely strengthens some points considered
from the students’ problems in reading as mentioned earlier. DRTA mainly focuses on improving the students’ reading comprehension especially the
students’ problem to detect the main idea and detail information in the texts. It also facilitates the students to be able to connect their prior knowledge with the
information of the texts through predicting, reading, and confirming the predictions.
By applying Directed Reading Thinking Activity, both the teacher and the students can be assisted in their own roles during the teaching and learning of
reading. The students can be helped to improve their comprehension and the teacher can be more involved and active to guide the students during the
reading.
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CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD
This chapter presents the method of the research which describes how the research was carried out. It includes the type of research, research setting, sharpening
the problem, research design, the research data collection, validity and reliability of the data, and the research data analysis.
A. The Type of Research
With regard to the objectives of the r esearch in improving the students’
reading comprehension through directed reading-thinking activity of class 8 G students at SMP N 9 Magelang, this research is categorized as action research. It
was conducted by following the action research design which is collaborative in nature Burns: 2007:12. He states one of the core characteristics of action
research as follows, “It is inquiry where participants and researchers contribute to knowledge
through collaborative communication processes in which all participants’
contributions are taken seriously. ”
In this research, the researcher should be taking a self-reflective, critical, and systematic approach to exploring the teaching context. The researcher, in this case
as the teacher, identified a problematic issue that the participants dealt with into more deeply and systematically. Then, the main point of the research is to bring
about changes and even better, improvement in the teaching and learning practice through some phase in a cycle of research.
The researcher collaborated with the English teacher in taking the decisions of determining the research subject, looking into problems happening in the field
and implementing the research design. She also collaborated with another collaborator who is a colleague to help her
in the data collection process. Besides being collaborative, the research also focused on improving the teaching and learning of reading. It would be described
qualitatively and supported by quantitative data that was gained from the stud
ents’ reading test score.
B. Research setting
This research was conducted at SMP N 9 Magelang in the second semester of the 20142015 academic year. The school is located in jl. Cemara No. 7 Kota
Magelang, Jawa Tengah. There are 6 English teachers. All graduated from English education department. They must have adequate knowledge and
experiences of teaching English to the students. The research was conducted at this school because there were some problems
spotted in the school. They were marked from the researcher’s experiences during
the PPL at this school on July-September 2014. Hence, the teaching and learning processes as well as the problems and issues could be figured out well as the
reasons of conducting action research. The research was conducted in class 8 G in the academic year of 20142015,
in the second semester using the 2013 curriculum. It was indicated that the teaching and learning process should apply the scientific approach. There were
two meetings a week. It spent 80 minutes for each meeting. In the first cycle, the class was held on Tuesday and Saturday, while in the second cycle, it was held on
Tuesday and Friday due to the change of the schedule in the school.
C. Subject of research
There were twenty nine students in class VIII G at SMP N 9 Magelang in the academic year of 20142015. The grade VIII students were selected because of
some considerations. The first one, it was risky to choose the grade VII students because they were still in the process of adaptation toward the school and learning
environment. The second one, it was not a wise idea to do research in the grade IX students because they were in the preparation for the national examination, in
which the school has already designed a certain schedule and target of learning for them in advance. Therefore, the grade VIII students were taken as the subject of
this research. The grade VIII students were
chosen as the English teacher’s recommendation. The potential problems were found after the interview and
observations were done. The students’ low reading comprehension was one of the
main problems to solve.
D. Research design
This research study was implemented in the form of collaborative action research. In conducting the collaborative action research, the researcher invited
the English teacher and the students to work collaboratively. The research was done collaboratively both in the reconnaissance steps and in the implementation.
In this case, the researcher cooperated with the English teacher of class 8 G and a collaborator who is the researcher’s colleague in university. The team worked
together in planning, implementing and reflecting the action. The action research was conducted in two cycles, depending on the aim of the
research study. According to Kemmis and McTaggart in Burns 2010:8, there are four steps in conducting action research, they are:
1. Planning In this phase, the researcher identified problems or issues and
developed a plan of action in order to bring about improvement in a specific area of the research context. The researcher considered the
possible investigation within the realities and constraints of the teaching situation and the possible potential improvement.
2. Action The action could be done by carefully considering the plan which
involves some deliberate interventions in the teaching situations over an agreed period of time. The interventions are „critically informed’ as
the assumptions about the current situation and plan new and alternative ways of doing things.
3. Observation In this phase, the researcher observed systematically the effects of the
action and documenting the context, actions and opinions of those
