Abstract

The application of strategy in the learning process can be crucial to support the students’ competence. This study is descriptive - survey research data was obtained from the questionnaire. This study aims to determine the use of the PQRST strategy to improve the reading ability of class XI BHS students at SMAN 1 Porong. The participants in this study were 31 students. In this questionnaire, the researcher gave 10 questions related to learning English, especially in reading and learning after being given the strategy. Based on the questionnaire, it was found that student's like to be taught using the PQRST strategy. It can be seen from the questionnaire question, more student's choose Yes than No and only some students choose sometimes. This is reinforced from the results of the questionnaire that the application of the PQRST strategy is able to help students improve their reading skills and students understand the content of the text from reading.

Introduction

Languageis a tool for everyone's communication, using the language people can express what they feel to others [1]. Language is a system of arbitrary sound symbols used by members of social groups to work together, communicate, and identify. Language is very important for communication with other people language is never separated from humans’ activities. Language is a communication tool in the form of a symbol system sounds produced by human speech tools [2].

Additionally, when learning a language especially English, it needs to focus on the skills of writing, reading, speaking, and listening. The use of English becomes a compulsory subject to learn in the entire world. English is most widely used in various countries in the world because English has already considered the official language to be used in the international world. In Indonesia, English encompasses as a foreign language to be learned in the school. That is why students should be mastered one of the English skills namely reading. This also needed a support from the teacher to assist students in learning English reading. It is important to facilitate to learning English, especially in reading in order to increase their knowledge of English [3].

Reading comprehension is the ability to comprehend the author's intent as a whole from the text content [4]. This is not only considered a process of communication between the author and readers but also as a communication product to gain understanding of the text. In the process of reading comprehension, the reader must be able to understand how the authors communicate and the meaning of the text. To achieve reading comprehension, a reader must have the ability, experience and knowledge to understand the text [4]. So it can be said that students not only read but must be able to understand the contents of the text the meaning. It is important for students to understand the reading text properly and have knowledge in the general view of the text [5]. Defines reading as complexity to extract, build meaning of a text. It can be explained that reading is also defined as the process of identifying written or printed text to understand its meaning.

The limited number of student’s in mastering reading comprehension is caused by many factors, including internal and external factors. Many factors of learning difficulties from internal factors, such as motivation, interests, word recognition, understanding and others [6]. Meanwhile, external motivation contains of environment, facilities, media, and also teaching strategy. Furthermore, there are several difficulties which often faced by the learners in improving reading skill most of students have low comprehension in reading because they are bored with long texts and students do not understand the contents of the text. Besides, the other problem is students have low motivation, and they think learning English is not important for them. It is really important for the teacher to know about how to teach the student’s in improving their reading skill and the learners must be recognize that this skill has an impact to support student’s ability [6]. Regarding with the statement, student’s have low comprehension will have an impact on their reading ability. Therefore, teachers are able to utilize the use of PQRST strategy to increase reading comprehension effectively.

Moreover, PQRST (Preview, Question, Read, State, and Test) is instructional strategies that have proven to be effective to improve students' reading comprehension, and its ability to remember the information contained in the text [7]. The PQRST strategy has empirically proven to be able to increase students' reading comprehension and it has been proven by several experts that this strategy is quite effective. PQRST strategy helps student’s to their problem in reading comprehension by using some steps. They are preview, question, read, state and test. Preview is the first step this makes student’s to activate their background knowledge. The second step is question it can be helped the student’s to focus and create the curiosity toward the text [7]. This motivated the student’s to read. The third step is read and at this stage students will read more carefully to find answers to the questions they have made in the previous stage. This also trains students to be able to read carefully and critically in thinking. Then state, this activity asks the student’s to recall all the specific information about the text. And the last is the test the teacher will provide another question to find out understanding of students and to ensure that students really understand the text.

Methodology

This study is adescriptive-survey research said “surveys gather data at a particular point in time with the intention of describing the nature of existing conditions, or identifying standards against which existing conditions could be compared, or determining the relationships that exist between specific events [8]." The topic of this research is the provision of a PQRST strategy to improve students' reading skills with narrative text material. Most of learning English is the main thing that will be answered through this research. In this problem, the researcher uses questionnaires as data collection, explains that descriptive research - surveys collect data from many people or students through questionnaires.

The participants of this study were students of class XI BHS at SMAN 1 Porong. There were 31 students who completed the questionnaire. Here, the questionnaire was used as the main data to find out whether there was progress after being given the strategy given by the researcher. There is a 5 likert scale questionnaire ranging from strongly agree strongly disagree where respondents were asked to indicate the extent to which they agree or disagree with the statement about the type of student after the treatment.

Findings and Discussion

Findings

Data collection technique that the researcher used is a questionnaire in order to know the student’s improvement in reading comprehension. In the questionnaire, the researcher gave several questions. The research sample must provide the answer by providing a checklist (√) for each answer. In this study, the researcher distributed questionnaires to 31 students as the object of research where the questionnaire was useful to determine the improvement of students' reading abilities. The questionnaire consists of 10 statement items which are arranged according to the indicators of students' reading ability or after the strategy is given. The explanations for the indicators in the questionnaire are: (1) Learning to read in English lessons, (2) difficulty reading in English, (3) what makes students find it difficult to understand a reading, (4) giving strategies. Furthermore, each indicator is analyzed to determine the percentage and criteria of students in improving reading skills. Here for the table questionnaire;

Based on the questionnaire, it was found that students like to be taught using the PQRST strategy, it can be seen from the questionnaire questions above, questions number 1 - 5 discuss about learning English before being given a strategy and questions 6 -10 discussing about after being given a strategy. From these results, more students choose Yes than No and only some students choose sometimes. It can be explained that the giving of strategies by researchers can help students for reading skills, students not only read but students can understand the content of the text from narrative readings that have been given by the researcher. Students are able to find the relationship between the main ideas in sentences, paragraphs, and the whole text.

Discussion

Questionnaire is a research that consists of a series of questions that aim to collect information from respondents [9]. Questionnaires can be thought of as a kind of written interview as used by researchers. From the results of the questionnaire given by the researcher with a total of 10 questions that discuss reading learning in class before using the strategy and after being given the strategy by the researcher, the PQRST strategy can improve the reading comprehension ability of class XI BHS student’s at SMAN 1 Porong, because this strategy applies appropriate and procedural steps so that after students do it step by step they can get a better understanding than students who just read straight away. As describe state that PQRST strategy can improve students' ability in reading comprehension well. This study also provided a questionnaire to determine student responses after being given the strategy, many students gave positive answers to the strategy given by the researcher and it was proven that PQRST could improve students' reading skills [10]. The application of this PQRST strategy is a new thing for students. Based on observations that have been made by researchers, the application of this PQRST strategy can improve students' reading skills because learning becomes more interesting and fun.

Conclusion

Based on the results of data analysis through questionnaires, it was revealed that the response of class XI BHS students at SMAN 1 Porong with a total of 31 students was very good. This can be seen from the results of the questionnaire that has been given by researchers to find out whether students feel helped and understand the content of the text after being given the strategy. In the questionnaire there are 10 questions that discuss learning English after and before being given a strategy. From the results of the answers to the questionnaire, more students answered yes than no and only a few answered sometimes. Students answered yes because they think the strategy provided by the researcher can help students in their reading skills. It can be concluded that the implementation of the PQRST strategy is quite good and effective in improving students' reading skills. Students can find the meaning of words, main ideas, detailed information and references. This shows that the implementation of the strategy.

References

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