JURNAL

The Use of PARS Strategy in Comprehendings in Recount Texts

By the First year Students of SMAN 2 Bangkinang

Nurfitriana

Guru Bahasa Inggris SD Negeri 006 Langgini-Bangkinang

Abstract: Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian tindakan kelas. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mencari solusi terhadap berbagai kendala dalam kegiatan pembelajaran Bahasa Inggris khususnya pada skill Reading. Selama ini siswa kesulitan untuk memahami teks recount. Dalam penelitian ini, peneliti  menggunakan  strategi PARS untuk membantu siswa dalam memahami teks recount. Penelitian ini dilakukan dalam satu siklus. Dalam satu siklus dilakukan dengan empat kali pertemuan. Sebelum pertemuan pertama peneliti memberi siswa pre-test dan setelah pertemuan keempat peneliti memberi siswa post-test. Hasil analisis yang diperoleh sebelum menggunakan strategi PARS dan sesudah menggunakan strategi PARS dalam memahami text recount, kemampuan anak dalam pemahaman text recount meningkat. Hal itu dapat dilihat  dari hasil post-test lebih bagus dari hasil pre-test.   

Keyword: PARS Strategy and Comprehending Recount Text.

 

INTRODUCTION

            There are four language skills in English. They are listening, writing, reading, and speaking. Reading is one of the four skills (Columbia University, 2003). Reading is very important, as it is a means of seeking knowledge. Carrell et al. (1998:1) state that reading is the most important of the four skills in a second language, particularly in English as a second or foreign language. It means that reading becomes the most important skill to be developed in the classroom. Students must develop they reading ability because with reading we can know about world without go there directly. With reading we can feel happy and get knowledge.

Based on the writer’s observation when she did teaching practice at SMAN 2 Bangkinang, she found that the students’ ability in comprehending reading text, especially in recount text is low. It can be seen from the result of the students’ quiz in answering reading text related to recount text. In the quiz and examination, the English teacher gave multiple choice tests. She gave 20 questions. They were about factual information, main idea, the meaning of vocabulary, reference, inference. The result of the observation showed that there was no student could reach Good to excellent level. There were 4 students or 13% of the students could reach good level, 10 students or 33% of the students reach average level. There were 16 students or 54% of the students at the below average level. In addition, there was no student at the poor level. The average score of the examination was 50, 87 (average level), Meanwhile the minimum criterion (KKM) of achievement of this school is up to 60. In other words, the result of examination had not achieved the minimum criteria of achievement of English subject at SMAN 2 Bangkinang.

Based on explanation above, the writer assumes that many students still find the difficulties and problems in comprehending the text, especially their lack of vocabularies, structure and the process of understanding the ideas in the text. The difficulties may be caused by several factors such as background knowledge, interest, attitude and the teaching strategy used the teacher. It is already known that the suitable techniques and strategies can help both teacher and learners in teaching process. In this case, the writer tries to use PARS strategy in classroom especially in teaching personal and biographical recount to the students.

            Based on explanation above, the writer is interested to carry out a research entitled “The Use of PARS Strategy in Comprehending in Recount Texts by the First year Students of SMAN 2 Bangkinang”. The writer assumes that students still have problems in comprehending the reading text. The writer uses this strategy is not only to teach recount text to the students but also to solve problem in reading comprehension. Moreover, the writer hopes this strategy can improve their reading comprehension.

Considering the situation above, the writer states some research questions: Is the use of PARS Strategy effective to improve students’ reading comprehension?

Purpose of this research to increasing the student’s ability in comprehending recount text use PARS Strategy.

The advantages of this research are:

1.      For students, it can increase the student’s ability in comprehending recount text.

2.      For teacher, it can improve learning strategy in learning process toward reading, especially in increasing the student’s ability in comprehending text. So, the minimum criteria of achievement (KKM) can be better.

3.      For school, as material to increase the quality of school in learning process.

4.      For writer, the research can be added the knowledge of the writer.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Reading is an activity with purpose. People may read in order to get information or enrich their knowledge and sometimes to critique a writer’s idea or writing style. People also read for pleasure or enhance knowledge of the language being read. Getting those as the consideration, the purposes for reading guide the reader’s select better texts to read.

            According to Hornby (1999:235) comprehension means and excessive aimed at improving or testing one’s understand of a language whether written or spoken. Besides that, comprehension has the same meaning with understanding. It can be explained that comprehension is capacity to grasp meaning in a text and also the writer’s idea. It is not guarantee that the students have known the meaning of the words, they can comprehend the text. Therefore, readers should have more concentration in reading activity in order to get better understanding.

            According to Hartono (2005:6) define recount text is a report or retell of event or activity in the past. It is to inform or to entertain the readers.

            According to Sue Stubbs and K. Wood (http://book.google.co.id) the purposes of recount text is reconstruct an events, experiences, and achievements from the past in a logical sequence. Some recount will be purely informative and some others will aim to both inform and entertain.

Robinson (1970) states that the PARS is a comprehension strategy that helps students think about the text they are reading while they're reading. It means that PARS method has good concept to apply in teaching reading comprehension. Basically, PARS strategy is aimed to study well and used for the purpose of obtaining information, acquiring greater understanding, or improving a skill. But in this case, the writer will apply it on assisting the students to comprehend the reading text.

            The component of PARS reading strategy is divided into four phases:

1. Preview

In this phase, the survey is designed to give students an overview of the content in order to help them active schema and assess their background. In surveying a chapter, student attempt to discover its content, what they already know about the topic, how interest they are content, how difficult the concepts are, and how the information is presented.

2. Ask

The questions give students specific idea to look for while reading. Keeping a question in mind can help maintain concentration on the reading’s focus; greater concentration can then lead to improved comprehension and efficiency. Before formulating questions from the subheading, students should consider their general purposes by answering question.

3. Reading and comprehension monitoring

Student read for answer to the question, they underline or take notes on information related to the question, as well as other information that seems important, relevant, and interesting. Read the easy bits faster and slow down for difficult new material. Stop when you need to think about what you have been reading. This activity is doing will help the readers receive the message from the text.

4. Summarize

Students are instructed to summarize by writing a paragraph that pulls together the key points of the information read. You may review once again to focusing on summarize the main points. This activity shows your understanding in reading the text.

This study is a kind of classroom action research. The action research in the language classroom is a tool used by teacher to improve their way of teaching. It was be conducted to find out how good is the use PARS reading strategy in improving students’ reading comprehension at the first year students of SMAN 2 Bangkinang. Action research is a process in cycle. It’s mean that the teacher can apply certain in order to give improvement to student. It’s begins with planning, action, observation, evolution and reflection. The circulation can be showed as follow:

This research was located at SMA Negeri 2 Bangkinang, in academic year 2010/2011. This research was held from April to July 2010. The subjects of this research were the first year students of SMAN 2 Bangkinang Class X2, there were 32 students in this class.

In this research, the writer collects the data by distributing the test to the students. The technique will be differentiated into two ways: pre-test and post-test will be conducted to find out the ability of students’ reading comprehension before being taught by using PARS strategy. After the pre-test, students will give the treatment by using PARS strategy. Finally, the post-test

Will be conducted to find out whether there will any difference achievements after the students are taught by using PARS strategy.

RESEARCH FINDING

        An action research has purpose to find the effective way in teaching and learning process in the classroom. In addition, it is to improve the quality of education and solve the problem in teaching and learning process.

            In this thesis, the writer did four meetings for the action and two meetings for the test. The writer did two tests for the students. They are pre - test and post – test. Pre- test is done before the action and post – test is done after the first cycle is finished.

            Before the writer did the action, she gave the students a pre-test. It was done to know students’ ability in comprehending the reading texts. The object of pre-test was class X2. It consists of 32 students.

            The result of the pre-test showed that the ability of students was still low in comprehending the reading texts. The total score of the pre-test was 1413 and the mean score was 44.16. The level of ability was still poor.

            After the pre-test was conducted, the writer did two meetings in learning personal recount and two meetings in learning biographical recount. In Each meeting the writer teaches students use PARS Strategy. The steps of PARS Strategy that use teacher are:

Step 1- Preview      : In this step the students look over the text by reading the title,     pictures, summary and introduction to get an idea of what they will be learning. This activity should not take more than three minutes.

This is the steps doing before the students read the text. As a teacher interact our students to think about the title.

Step 2- Ask                 :  After the students have preview the text the title, students turn the title into a question if it is not written as one. Reading to answer a question is helpful in remembering the important information and requires focusing the reading on specific details.

                                       Some of question that will appear in the students mind like

                                       What did the title about?

                                          When the story happened?

                                             Or what do I already know about the story?

The students don’t ask directly for their teacher, therefore a teacher no doesn’t give the answer.

Step 3- Read               : Students read the section of material or text carefully and comprehensively to get more information from the text, being sure to answer the question posed by the title. And automatically the students can answer their questions that appear in their mind after read the text.

Step 4- Summarize      : The last step, when the students have finished reading, the students will be given a few minutes to summarize the material. Think over the information what they have just read to find the main point of the text.

                                       During this step, the teacher observes students as they complete this process with a partner or small group.

The post-test was done after the writer finished her action by distributing the same test items with pre-test to the students. The total was four meetings in reading activity by applying PARS strategy. The result of post-test showed that the total of students’ score was 2257 and the mean was 70.53.

            The analysis of students’ data, the scores for both pre-test and post-test can be seen in the following table:

Table 6

The Result of Analysis Data

Value	Score
	Pre-Test	Post-Test
	424	676
	44.16	70.53
SD	2.38
S	0.42
T	-62.78
DF	31

From the table 6 above, it is seen clearly that there was a significant difference of summation of score and mean score between pre-test and post-test. There was difference between the result of pre-test and post-test. The difference was 26.37 points. Therefore, the students’ ability increased more than half of the students in the classroom could reach the criteria of successful on minimum standard of achievement in SMA Negeri 2 Bangkinang. The criteria of successful on minimum standard of achievement in SMA Negeri 2 Bangkinang is 60.

            Based on the calculation above, it can be seen that the score of pos-test better than the score of pre-test. In other words, the use of PARS Strategy gives effect to improve students’ reading comprehension in recount text. After finding the mean score, the writer calculated the sum of the difference between the pre-test and post-test score (D) and quadrate difference score (D²). The sum of the difference score was 252 and the quadrate difference score was 2144. Then, the writer calculated the standard deviation and standard error of the data. The standard deviation of the students was 2.38 while the standard error was 0.42.

After calculating the standard error, the match t-test could be calculated. The result of calculation of the t-test was 62.78. The last calculation was to find out the degree of freedom, it was 31. The alpha was set as 0.05 for two tail test. The critical value was 62.78. Therefore, t-observe was higher than t-critical (62.78>2.04). It proves that the use of PARS Strategy in teaching reading comprehension can improve students. The highest increasing was 13 points and it was one student. Moreover, the lowest increasing was 4 points and it was only one student too.

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTION

Conclusions

            Having all the data calculation  the research about the use of PARS strategy in improving reading comprehension of the first year students at SMA Negeri 2 Bangkinang in chapter IV, it is found out that, firstly, there is different achievement between the students’ score in the beginning (before the treatment by using PARS) and at the end (after the treatment). In the beginning the ability of students in comprehending the reading text is still low. Therefore, the result could not reach the minimum standard of achievement at SMA Negeri 2 Bangkinang.

            Secondly, the use of PARS in reading comprehension could increase students’ ability in comprehending the reading text. The result of the data showed that the results of students’ score were improved. There was significant improvement between pre-test and post-test. Therefore, most of students could reach the successful on minimum standard of achievement at SMA Negeri 2 Bangkinang. The ability of students was increased from poor to average to good level.

            And finally, the action has been conducted in one cycle with four meetings. 2 meeting in teaching reading by using personal recount and 2 meeting by using biographical recount. Due to the criteria of successful on the minimum standard of achievement could be reached in one cycle.

Suggestion

            Related to the result of the research finding at the end of writing, the writer wants to offer some suggestions. Firstly, the use of PARS strategy to improve students’ reading comprehension made teaching reading more enjoyable. Then, working group activity in PARS gives more opportunities for students to be active in learning process. Next, teachers can use PARS to improve reading comprehension ability for students. Finally, teachers should be more creative in teaching reading by PARS strategy. The way of teaching should be interesting for students. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carrel, P, Devine, J and Eskey, D. 1998. Interactive Approaches to Second Language Reading. USA. Sevents Printing. Cambridge University Press.

Depdiknas. 2006. Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan (KTSP). Sekolah Menengah Pertama dan Madrasah Tsanawiyah. Jakarta. Depdiknas.

Hartono, R. 2005. Genres of Texts. Semarang State University.

Hornby, A.S. 1995. Oxford Advance Learners Dictionary. Fifth edition. British. Oxford University Press.

Sue, S and K. Wood. 2005. Targeting Information Text. Retrieved on January 02, 2010, from (http://books.google.co.id).