Students' strategies in English reading comprehension at SMA Muhammadiyah 1 Gresik

This study focuses on students’ strategies in English reading comprehension at SMA Muhammadiyah 1 Gresik. The questions of this research are 1) How do students XIth MIPA 2 at SMA Muhammadiyah 1 Gresik apply the reading strategy in English text? 2) What are the benefits in applying reading strategies in English reading comprehension by students XIth MIPA 2 at SMA Muhammadiyah 1 Gresik? This is descriptive qualitative research. The instruments used questionnaire and interview. The result shows that students apply many reading strategies in reading text. 1) QAR: looked at the initial of the questions, read text based on questions show, and answer the questions, 2) Scanning: Finding two or three words which describe information from text, students only focused on italicized words to help them answering questions, and students answered the questions directly, 3) GIST: decide specific sentences in a text, write a summary from text, and detect the main idea and answer the questions, 4) Coding: underlined words which do not know the meaning and give the symbol, read the text and the questions, and answered the questions directly, 5) Selective highlighting and note-taking: read and highlight main idea, read questions, highlight main idea and answered the question, 6) Skimming: read the first sentence in each paragraph, read the text uncompletely, and answer the questions, 7) Previewing: Change the title into a question, read the text based on showed-questions, and answer the questions. Students’ benefit in applying reading strategies are 1) efficient of reading time for students, 2) practical in answering questions, 3) completing the reading task quickly, 4) understand the text easily. Finally, these benefits help the students in answering the question from text and intensely understand the text