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IMPROVING THE STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION THROUGH

LISTEN-READ-DISCUSS (LRD) STRATEGY AT THE EIGHTH GRADE OF SMP

NEGERI 1 LAHEWA IN 2022/2023

Theodora Vinta Sukartini Nazara

Elwin Piarawan Zebua

Trisman Harefa

Afore

Tahir Harefa

1, 2, 3, 4

Undergraduate Thesis, Universitas Nias

Jl. Yos Sudarso,Ombalata Ulu, Kota Gunungsitoli, Sumatera Utara 22812

Email: [email protected]

ABSTRAK

Membaca adalah proses mendapatkan ide dari teks. Pemahaman membaca berarti memahami apa

yang telah dibaca dan itu tergantung pada proses berpikir aktif. Terdapat beberapa permasalahan

yang dihadapi siswa dalam pemahaman membaca di Kelas VIII SMP Negeri 1 Lahewa, salah

satunya adalah Siswa mempunyai masalah dalam memahami keterampilan membaca mereka. Oleh

karena itu, untuk mengatasi hal tersebut, peneliti melakukan penelitian dengan menggunakan

strategi Listen-Read-Discuss. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk Meningkatkan Pemahaman

Membaca Siswa melalui Listen-Read-Discuss (LRD) Strategi Pada Kelas VIII SMP Negeri 1

Lahewa Tahun 2022/2023. Hasil belajar dilihat dari nilai rata-rata siswa dari lembar evaluasi tes.

Terdapat 3 siswa (10%) termasuk dalam tingkat gagal, 3 siswa (10%) termasuk dalam tingkat

kurang, 11 siswa (36%) termasuk dalam tingkat cukup, 4 siswa (13%) termasuk dalam kategori

baik dan 9 siswa (10%) termasuk dalam tingkat cukup siswa (30%) termasuk dalam kategori sangat

baik. Pada Siklus II kemampuan siswa meningkat. Tidak ada siswa yang dikategorikan gagal dan

kurang. Nilai tertinggi 100 dan nilai terendah 75. Terdapat 1 siswa (3%) “tingkat cukup”. 4 siswa

(13%) berada pada “tingkat baik”, dan 25 siswa (83%) berada pada “tingkat sangat baik”. Dari

hasil penelitian dapat disimpulkan bahwa Strategi Mendengar-Baca-Diskusi meningkatkan

pemahaman membaca di Kelas VIII SMP Negeri 1 Lahewa tahun 2022/2023.

Kata Kunci: Pemahaman Membaca, Listen-Read-Discuss Strategy, Penelitian Tindakan Kelas

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 CC BY-SA International License.

ABSTRACT

Reading is the process of getting ideas from texts. Reading comprehension meant

understanding what had been read and it was an active thinking process that depends.

There are several problems faced by students in reading comprehension at the Eighth

Grade of SMP Negeri 1 Lahewa, one of which was have problem in comprehending skill in

their reading. Therefore, to overcome this, researcher conducted research using the

Listen-Read-Discuss strategy. The purpose of the research is to Improving the Students’

Reading Comprehension through Listen-Read-Discussion (LRD) strategy at the Eighth

Grade of SMP Negeri 1 Lahewa in 2022/2023. The results of the study were seen from the

average score of students from the test evaluation sheet. There are 3 students (10%)

included in the failed level, 3 students (10%) included in the less level, 11 students (36%)

included in the sufficient level, 4 students (13%) included in good category and 9 students

(30%) are included in the very good category. In Cycle II students' abilities increased.

There are no students who are categorized as failed and lacking. The highest score is 100

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and the lowest score is 75. There is 1 student (3%) "enough level". 4 students (13%) at

"good level", and 25 students (83%) at "very good level". From the results of the study it

can be concluded that the Listen-Read-Discuss Strategy improves reading comprehension

at the Eighth Grade of SMP Negeri 1 Lahewa in 2022/2023.

Keywords: Reading Comprehension, Listen-Read-Discuss Strategy, CAR

INTRODUCTION

Reading was the most important skill that the students must be mastered, reading was

also very possible to acquire to be success in the school and the future life, because of

reading could increase the student critical thinking, creative and spiritual. In general,

reading is one of the four language skills, namely listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

Beside that, reading as one of the language skills has an important role for facilitating

students to learn a foreign language, in which through reading the students are expected to

be able to find the information from the text, identify the main idea, identify the explicit or

implicit from the text and understanding the purpose of the text. Students' reading skills are

an aspect of teaching reading where students are taught to be able to read texts properly

and correctly according to their abilities, reading ability is a complex matter that demands

cooperation between a numbers of abilities.

According to Terasne (2018:113), reading is the process using to get idea from text,

reading enables from people to get the information from the varieties of text, such as

written or printed information from newspaper, magazines, and brochures. In reading, not

only reading the text but also students must comprehend and understand the meaning of the

text, so students must have good reading comprehension skills. Reading comprehension

means understanding what has been read, and it is an active thinking process that depends

not only on comprehension skills but also on students' experience and prior knowledge

comprehension involves understanding vocabulary, seeing the relationship between words

and concepts, organizing ideas, recognizing ideas, recognizing authors, making judgments

and evaluating them. According to Andi (2018:15), reading comprehension also

understanding what has been read. It is an active thinking process that depend not only

comprehension skill but also the students experience and prior knowledge comprehension

involves understanding vocabulary, seeing the relationship among words and concepts,

making judgment and evaluating. So, reading comprehension is very important for

students, if students do not understand what they read they cannot capture the meaning of

the text.

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Based on syllabus of 2013 curriculum that is used in SMP Negeri 1 Lahewa,

particularly in the eighth grade, the core competencies was understand, apply, analyze

factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive knowledge based on curiosity about

science, technology, arts, culture, and humanities with humanity, nationality, statehood,

and civilization related to the causes of phenomena and events and apply procedural

knowledge in a particular field of study according to their talents and interests to solve

problems. The basic competence was that students could Compose oral and written recount

texts, very short and simple, related to personal experiences in the past (personal recount),

taking into account social functions, text structure, and linguistic elements, correctly and in

context. The Indicators based on the syllabus were knowing social functions, text

structures, and linguistic elements In teaching reading students are required to be able to

understand the text well. To achieve the target in the school syllabus, the Minimum

Competency Criteria (MCC) for English subjects is 70. So, the student can be said to be

successful if the student get a minimum score of 70.

Based on researcher’s observations at the eighth grade of SMP Negeri 1 Lahewa, the

researcher found the problems faced by students at the schools were the students’ reading

is still low and then the students’ have problem in comprehending skill in their reading and

the students’ have difficult in aspects comprehending reading and also the strategy used by

the teacher was not suitable to improve the students’ reading comprehension. Another

problem that also existed was that students could not identify the main ideas and they

could not conclude topics and they find it difficult to found important points from the text.

This meant that students' comprehend is lacking and students' reading comprehension was

not increasing as well as students' lack of motivation in reading. Sometimes the strategies

used by teacher did not affect students in learning. The problems that occur can be

influenced by several factors, the first is the internal factor found in students, namely the

lack of student motivation to read, where motivation is one of the important learning

factors in reading comprehension, then the lack of self-actualization, is one of the basic

physical needs where students have the feeling to create and improve their reading ability

to be the best. Second are external factors, namely the influence of the school environment

which is sometimes not supportive, then the lack of reading culture in the school

environment and schools which sometimes do not have a special place for reading other

than the library, and the role of the library which is less than optimal.

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Based on the problems above, the researcher wanted to solve the problem by using

the Listen-Read-Discuss strategy. Listen-Read-Discuss strategy is the right strategy in

solving some of the students' problems about reading comprehension. According to Irma

(2019: 14), the Listen-Read-Discuss strategy is very effective and the better for improving

students' reading comprehension skills because in implementing this strategy it involves

students actively in learning. In this case the Listen-Read-Discuss strategy has its own

uniqueness where this strategy helps students to understand the material presented orally,

build students' prior knowledge before they read the text, and engage readers in discussion.

Listen-Read-Discuss strategy is very simple and flexible and can be used in all areas of the

curriculum with almost any text. According to Terasne (2018: 144), the Listen-Read-

Discuss strategy is a strategy to help students understand a text where students listen to the

teacher's explanation and read the text and discuss material in groups and discuss in class

as a whole. Discussions were believed to increase students’ creativity, where students

could express any ideas, information or experiences, and foster student communication.

The Listen-Read-Discuss strategy had three important ability elements, namely Listen-

Read-Discuss, and it also had several advantages, namely being able to build students'

reading texts, build students' knowledge before reading texts, and compare information

after they read texts. Students would be involved in class discussions that build their

understanding of the text and increase students' confidence in class discussions, by

implementing this strategy learning is more active, meaningful, effective and efficient.

Based on these facts, researcher conducted Classroom Action Research (CAR) to

improve the quality of the teaching and learning process in order to obtain better results,

especially to improve students' reading comprehension. According to Kasbolah (2020:3)

stated that, Classroom action research is an effort to improve the quality of education that

directly touches on field problems, namely problems that exist in class. Classroom Action

Research functions as a tool for solving problems that arise in the classroom and also as a

tool for in-service training, where teachers use new skills and methods and sharpen their

analytical abilities. The target of the success of the study was students had to able to

reading comprehension by using the Liten-Read-Discuss Strategy with a very good

percentage level, then the students had to able to achieve the success target by showing a

percentage of success rate of 90% of 30 students, and to achieve the target which was

stated in syllabus, the school had decided the Minimum Competence Criteria (MCC) that

70 the indicator of students’ success in reading comprehension. Activities carried out to see

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what percentage of students' abilities can be seen from several stages of the cycle, where

the number of cycles depends on the success achieved by students, where each cycle

consists of two meetings, then if the first cycle had shown student success then the research

would be stopped, but if still there had been no improvement continued in the second

cycle. The subject of the research was students at the Eighth Grade of SMP Negeri 1

Lahewa in 2022/2023 amounting to 30 students.

Based on the explanation above, the researcher was interested in conducting research

by choosing the title, “Improving the Students’ Reading Comprehension Trough Listen-

Read-Discuss (LRD) Strategy at the Eighth Grade of SMP Negeri 1 Lahewa in 2022/2023”

METHODS

In conducting the research, researcher used Classroom Action Research (CAR), the

purpose of this research is improving students’ reading comprehension. Irwandi et al

(2018) Classroom Action Research (CAR) is regarded as a form of research that is

reflective in nature by conducting certain actions in order to improve classroom learning

professionally. According Niff in Dwi Susilowati (2018) states that classroom action

research is for the improvement of learning and learning outcomes. The main purpose of

classroom action research is to improve and improve the professional services of educators

in handling the teaching and learning process. This goal can be achieved by car rying out

various alternative actions to solve learning problems. Therefore, the focus of classroom

action research lies in alternative actions planned by educators, then tried and then

evaluated whether these alternative actions can be used to solve the learning problems that

arise being faced by educators.

Researcher used LRD Strategy to take the opportunity to improving students' reading

comprehension. Classroom action research meetings are held to find out student progress

using board games. Kemis in Muhammad Djajadi in Indra Nanda et al (2021), state that

action research is a form of self-reflective research undertaken by participants in social

(including educational) situations to improve one's own practice. In doing so, a

comprehensive understanding of the practices and situations in which they are carried out

will be obtained.

The object of the action in this research was improving the students’ reading

comprehension through LRD Strategy, especially in the eighth grade of SMP Negeri 1

Lahewa in Academic Year 2022/2023. Researcher acted as facilitators, motivators and

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decision makers during the teaching and learning process to help, support, motivate,

facilitate and treat students in achieving teaching and learning goals.

Kurt Lewin, in Rusman (2020), action research had cycles. In one cycle consisted of

four steps namely planning, action, observation and reflection, namely:

1. Planning was the stage of the Action Research process Classes were arranged based on

preliminary studies which explain the preparation for conducting research and

implementing learning as well as observation instruments.

2. Action was the stage of implementation or implementation of action planning.

3. Observation is an activity of collecting data and information using instruments that

had been completed and estimated including external observation.

4. Reflection was an activity carried out in the form of discussion of the results of

observations. This stage was the essence of classroom action research

In this study, the research subjects were Eighth Grade students at SMP Negeri 1

Lahewa for the academic year 2022/2023. The condition of at the eighth grade of SMP

Negeri 1 Lahewa be seen in the table below:

The Total Number of Students at Eighth Grade of SMP Negeri 1 Lahewa in 2022/2023

Grade

Male

Female

Total

VIII-5

Data collection technique are the steps that carried out in collecting data and

information during research. In this study, the data collection technique were observation,

field notes and test/evaluation sheet.

1. Observation

Observation activities were carried out by observing all activity that take place during

learning. Observing and measuring the level of success or achievement of learning.

2. Field notes

Field notes would be prepared by researchers during the process of implementing

learning activities, to make it easier to record any activities that occur during the

learning process.

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3. Test/evaluation sheet

Gave in the form of written questions to measure and know the ability of students and

used as an evaluation tool to assess how far the knowledge and abilities that have been

obtained by students.

The data analysis technique in this study carried out by means of qualitative and

quantitative analysis techniques. Data analysis technique are divided into two techniques as

follow:

1. Analyzing the qualitative data

Qualitative data analysis was the process of organizing, analyzing, and observing the

result of student activities during the learning process.

Obviously, the qualitative data was described by the researcher as follows: Observation

sheets are analyzed and evaluated using formulas such as those written by Irma (2019) as

follows:

100

(%) PD x=

2. Analyzing the Quantitative data

Quantitative data was described by the researcher as follows:

The evaluation sheet was analyzed and evaluated by printing the correct answer 1

(one), and the wrong answer 0 (zero). By using the following (Erika Tandiaongan, 2023):

Score =

x 100

Scale of Students’ Score

Score

Criteria

85- 100

Very Good

75 – 84

Good

60 – 74

Enough

40- 59

Less

<39

Fail

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FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION

Research Findings

This research was conducted in two cycle, The meeting begin May to

June 2023.

a. Cycle I

Based on cycle I, the level of students' reading comprehension through Listen-Read-

Discuss Strategy can be seen from the student tests that have been carried out, the

researcher looks for student scores and grades, then looks at the percentage of students'

reading comprehension through Listen-Read-Discuss Strategy as described in the table

below:

Table 1

The Students’ Reading Comprehension Through Listen-Read-Discuss (Lrd) Strategy At

The Eighth Grade Of Smp Negeri 1 Lahewa In Cycle 1

MCC

Level

Score

Frequency

Percentage (%)

Fail

0 – 39

10%

Less

40 – 59

10%

Enough

60 – 74

36%

Good

75 – 84

13%

Very Good

85-100

30%

Total

100%

The data from the table above explains that students' ability to read comprehension

using the Listen-Read-Discuss Strategy in Cycle I failed. There were 9 students (30%)

categorized into very good level, 4 students (13%) categorized into good level, 11 students

(36%) categorized into good enough level, 3 students (10%) categorized into less level,

and 3 students (10%) categorized into failure level. There were 13 students who passed the

test. The number of students who passed the Cycle I test was 45.30%. In contrast, the

number of students who did not pass the test was 17 students. This shows that 55.69% of

students could not reach the set MCC. The average student score was 67,33.

The result of the students vocabulary test cycle I could be reviewed in the following

graphic.

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Fail

Enough

Very good

Percentage%

Fail

Less

Enough

Good

Very good

Graphic 1. The Percentage of the Students’ Score in Cycle I

Based on the data information above, it shows that students' ability in reading

comprehension using the Listen-Read-Discuss strategy still looks adequate. The students

have not been able to pass the Minimum Completeness Criteria (MCC), which is 70.

The researcher made some improvements to be implemented in the next cycle,

namely:

a. The researcher prepared lesson plans

b. The researcher prepared new reading texts that are familiar to students

c. The researcher explained more about the procedures for implementing the

Listen-Read-Discuss Strategy to students

d. The researcher explained the meaning of Recount text to students and make

students more active in participating in learning

e. The researcher motivated students to better follow the instructions given, so that

activities can run well.

b. Cycle II

In the Cycle II, the researcher evaluated the results of students' evaluation sheets in

reading comprehension using the Listen-Read-Discuss strategy. The researcher tested

students' comprehension by giving questions in the form of multiple choice tests. The

results of the test are described in table below:

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Table 2

The Students’ Reading Comprehension Through Listen-Read-Discuss (LRD) Strategy

In Cycle II

MCC

Level

Score

Frequency

Percentage (%)

Fail

0 – 39

Less

40 – 59

Enough

60 – 74

Good

75 – 84

13%

Very Good

85 – 100

83%

Total

100%

Based on the data above, it explained that students were be able to understand

reading texts very well, especially on recount texts using the Listen-Read-Discuss Strategy

in cycle II well. The classification results of the test are: 1 student (3%) was at the enough

level, 4 students (13%) were at the good level, and 25 students (83%) were at the very

good level. The average score of the students was 91,83. These results show that students

successfully used the Listen-Read-Discuss strategy in understanding recount texts.

The results of students' speaking skills in Cycle II are shown in the graph on the

following page:

Graphic 2 The Percentage of the Students’ Score in the Cycle II

The graph shows students' abilities after applying the Listen-Read-Discuss Strategy.

This was due to the activities and procedures of the Listen-Read-Discuss Strategy in Cycle

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II that had been carried out by students and researchers. All students are categorized in

"Good Level". Therefore, the researchers concluded that the Listen-Read-Discuss Strategy

was able to improve students' reading comprehension. This can be seen from the average

score of students who have achieved the Minimum Competency Criteria (MCC) that have

been determined and the researchers did not continue the research in the next cycle.

CONCLUSION

The research findings was Listen-Read-Discuss Strategy can improve the students’

reading comprehension at the Eighth Grade of SMP Negeri 1 Lahewa. Based on the

findings that the researcher gets in analysis the data, the researcher takes the conclusion as

follow:

1. In Cycle I, average value of students in the first cycle is 67.33. The highest score

was 95 and the lowest score was 20. There were 3 students (10%) included in the

failing level, 3 students (10%) included in the poor level, 11 students (36%)

included in the sufficient level, 4 students (13%) included in the good level and 9

students (30%) included in the very good level. Furthermore, the researcher

continued the research into Cycle II.

2. In Cycle II, students' abilities increased. Students' reading comprehension through

Listen Read strategy, with recount text material. There are no students who are

categorized as failed and lacking. The average student value of 91.83 is included in

the good category. The highest score is 100 and the lowest score is 70. There are 1

student (3%) "at enough level". 4 students (13%) at "good level", and 25 students

(83%) at "very good level".

Based on the research findings, the researcher concluded that Listen-Read Discuss

(LRD) Strategy can Improving the students’ reading comprehension at the eighth grade of

SMP Negeri 1.

SUGGESTION

Based on the research findings, the researcher gives some suggestions, as follows:

the first for the teacher, had to apply various strategies in learning English, especially in

reading comprehension. The students should try to learn English by reading various

English books. For the institutions should provide media as well as complete facilities

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regularly to made better progress in achieving English, and make teaching and learning

more effective. The results of this research were a subject that could be developed broadly

and in depth by adding other variables or enlarging the sample. In teaching reading

learning the teacher had to pay attention to the condition of the students, so that the teacher

was able to provide an approach that made it easier for students to receive material.

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