Improving the Reading Comprehension Ability of the Seventh Graders of SMPN 8 Malang Using Semantic Mapping Strategy

ABSTRAK Jannah, Nuris Lailatul. 2018. Improving the Reading Comprehension Ability of the Seventh Graders of SMPN 8 Malang Using Semantic Mapping Strategy. Undergraduate Thesis, Department of English, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Negeri Malang. Advisors: (1) Dr. Furaidah. M.A. (2) Dr. Johannes A. Prayogo, M.Pd., M.Ed. Keywords: semantic mapping, reading comprehension ability, descriptive texts Reading comprehension is one of the four skills that has a crucial role in the development of students’ language proficiency. However, VII-C class students that the researcher taught frequently face difficulty in comprehending texts. It can be seen from the mean scores of the reading test conducted before the implementation which is 68. Their problems varied from lacking of vocabulary knowledge, difficulty in identifying main ideas and supporting ideas, and background knowledge. To help the students increase their reading comprehension ability, the researcher conducted a Classroom Action Research (CAR) using semantic mapping strategy. This study was conducted in one cycle that consisted of five meetings including the reading test. The subjects were VII-C class students that consisted of 32 students. The instruments used to collect the data were reading test, observation checklist, field notes, students’ questionnaire, and interview with the students and English teacher. The study is considered successful if 75% of the students could achieve the minimum standard score which is 76. The results revealed that only 2 out of 31 students got the score below 76, which means that 90.62% of the students achieved the criterion of success. The implementation of semantic mapping strategy could improve the students’ reading comprehension ability in reading descriptive texts. It can be seen from the improvement of the students’ mean score which was 68 before the strategy was implemented and 89.67 after the strategy was implemented. The implementation of semantic mapping strategy helps the students identify the essential information from the texts into the graphic and illustrates the relationships among ideas. As the results, the students could identify the main ideas and supporting ideas of the text easily. Therefore, the researcher suggests that English teachers implement semantic mapping as an alternative teaching strategy. In applying this strategy, the teachers should make sure that the students understand how to make the semantic mapping because it affects the students’ understanding toward the text. In addition, the teachers are suggested to use some variations of semantic mapping to prevent the students from boredom in following the lesson. Moreover, the teachers are also suggested to implement semantic mapping strategy in three stages of reading beginning with pre-reading, whilst-reading, and post-reading stage. For further researchers, it is recommended to implement this strategy in more than one cycle to improve the implementation of semantic mapping strategy in the teaching reading