Institutional Repository | Satya Wacana Christian University: Investigation of Students' Reading Strategies in Language Learning of SMA Negeri 3 Salatiga

Investigation of Students’ Reading Strategies in Language Learning of
SMA Negeri 3 Salatiga

Dinar Kurnia Kusumastuti

Abstract
Reading strategies is an important thing to do in order to succeed in reading English texts.
By doing these strategies, students are likely to fully comprehend the meaning derived
from the English texts they read. Zhang (1993) stated that reading strategies were divided
into three categories. They were cognitive, metacognitive and compensation. The research
question of this is what strategies are adopted by high school students in reading English
texts. Thus, this paper investigated what reading strategies adopted by the participants.
The participants of this study were one hundred and ten (110) students of SMA Negeri 3
Salatiga who were at the X, XI and XII grades. The method used for this study was
descriptive method to gain broader perspectives on high school students about what
strategy adopted and to identify the overall average strategy use. To obtain the result of the
study, close-ended questionnaire based on the interactive model of reading process and the
information offered by Weinstein and Mayer (1986), Pintrich (1999), and Oxford (1990)
was used. The result showed that the most frequently used strategy by the students of
SMA Negeri 3 Salatiga was metacognitive. In contrast, compensation reading strategy was
the least frequently used strategy. It was because because students likely had the nature to

do spontaneous metacognitive reading strategies to help them understand the English
texts.
Keywords: L2 reading, reading strategies, language learning, young learners.