Improving Students’ Reading Comprehension By The Seventh Grade at SMP N. Parmonangan.

Abstract

Reading comprehension is the understanding of the written word, the comprehension of the content being read, and the construction of textual meanings. The study's objective is to determine whether or not students' reading comprehension can be improved after being taught the read, ask, and put (RAP) strategy. The research design for this study is classroom action research. The data were taken from students reading test on descriptive text, observation, documentation, and questionnaire sheet. The population for this study was all of the students in the seventh grade at SMP Negeri 1 Parmonangan, which had three classes with a different number of students in each. In the seventh grade, there are 85 students at SMP Negeri 1 Parmonangan. The writer take samples of group A were consist of 25 students. The data shows that, there are still many students on grade VII SMP who are difficult in reading comprehension. The data in this study was compiled from both qualitative and quantitative sources. The observation sheets, documentation, and questionnaire sheet were used to collect the qualitative data. The quantitative data came from the pre-test, cycle I, and cycle II is reading comprehension tests.The total scores of students in each test are as follows: in the pre-test 1475, in the post-test cycle I 1.720, and in the post-test cycle II 2.010. Based on students' scores in each test, the writer found that the average score of students in each cycle increased from 59%, 68.8%, to 80.4%. After using RAP strategy in teaching reading comprehension the writer found that the student’s mean score in post-test II is above KKM. It means that the application of the RAP strategy can indeed help deal with problems and improve students' reading comprehension scores.