The Effectiveness of Using Speed Reading Technique To Improve Students’ Reading Comprehension Ability On The Seventh Grade Students of MTs N Kebumen 1 In The Academic Year of 2011/2012

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.