THE EFFECTIVENESS OF USING REAP (READ, ENCODE, ANNOTATE, PONDER) STRATEGY TO IMPROVE READING COMPREHENSION ABILITY IN NARRATIVE TEXT AT THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS OF SMP N 7 PURWOREJO IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR 2013/2014

Abstract

English is an international language. Almost all countries have adaptedEnglish used as a compulsory subject at schools. Therefore, there are four skills in learning English must be acquired by students. Those are reading, speaking, writing and listening. Reading is one of the four language skills that are very important in learning English, so the students’ must learn it. Teaching reading in junior high school has not succeeded yet. Although students have learned the language for many years, they still have many difficulties to comprehend reading texts. One of the strategies in teaching reading is by using REAP strategy. In this strategy, teachers guide the students to comprehend a narrative text easily. REAP is an acronym for Read, Encode, Annotate, andPonder. The purpose of this research is to find out whether REAP strategy is effective or not to improve reading comprehension ability in narrative text at the eighth grade students of SMP N 7 Purworejo. In this research the researcher took 60 students as the sample. As the experimental group, the researcher used class VIII B which consists of 30 students. Meanwhile, as the control group, the researcher took 30 students of class VIII A. Then, the researcher gave pre-test and post-test to both classes.The researcher then statistically analyzed the data by using t-test polled variance. After analyzing the data, the researcher concludes that teaching narrative text using REAP strategy is effective. As the fact, the result of t-value is 3.66 based on the 0.05 significant level, the value of t-table is 2.00. The result of computation shows that t-value is higher than t-table, that is 3.66>2.00. So, it can be stated that the alternative hypothesis “the use of REAP strategyto improve reading comprehension ability in narrative text at the eighth grade students of SMP N 7 Purworejo in the academic year 2011/2012 is effective” is accepted.