Abstract:
English is the first foreign language in schools. Reading is central to the
learning process. By reading activity, people may gain important information that
are not presented by teachers in the classroom. Therefore, English becomes
compulsary subject for junior high school students. Many students are poor in
reading English. If the teacher could take an appropriate method in teaching
reading, it would help the students to read in effective way. One of teaching
technique is Speed Reading Technique. Based on the statement above, the
purpose of this study is to find out whether the use of Speed Reading Technique
to improve the students’ reading comprehension ability effective or not.
The study is called experimental research. The population of this research
is the seventh grade students of MTs N Kebumen 1 in the academic year of
2011/2012. Population of this research is 273 students. Sample of this research is
two classes which are divided into control (VII H, 33 students) and experimental
group (VII G, 33 students). The sampling technique which is used is purposive
sampling. The writer taught descriptive and procedure text by using Speed
Reading Technique to the experimental group and using common way of teaching
to the control group. The writer then statistically analyzed the data by using t-test
polled variance.
After analyzing the data, the writer concludes that teaching descriptive
and procedure text by using Speed Reading Technique is effective to improve
students’ reading comprehension ability. As the fact, the result of t-value is 5.44.
Based on the 0.05 significant levels, the value of t-table is 2.000. The result of
computation shows that t- value is higher than t-table. That is 5.44 > 2.000.
Another fact shows that the technique used is effective is shown by the mean of
experimental group that is higher than the mean of control group. In the
experimental group, the mean is 79.85. On the contrary, the mean of control group
is 67.88. It also can be seen from the mean score of WPM experimental group
(147 WPM) is higher than the mean score of WPM control group (145 WPM).
Based on the result, it can be seen that the students’ reading
comprehension ability increases. They can understand the passages easier and
efficiently. Moreover, the students are not bored in learning English since the
technique used. They can get the maximum result with minimum effort.
