OPTIMIZING PRE - READING ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ READIN G COMPREHENSION

ABSTRACT LenggahingAsriDwiEkoSaputri. X2211029. OPTIMIZING PRE - READING ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION ( A Classroom Action Research at the 11 th Grade of SMA N 6 Surakarta in the Academic Year 2012 / 2013 ) .Teacher Training and Edu cation Faculty.SebelasMaret University. The aims of this research are to inve stigate: (1) how the use of pre-reading activities can improve the students’ r eading comprehension. (2) the classroom situation when pre-reading activities ar e implemented in the reading class. This research was carried out at SMA N 6 Surakarta in March 2013. The subject of the research was the students of class XI Bahasa 2 of SMA N 6 Surakarta in the academic year 2012/2013. The resear ch method was Action Research. It was conducted in two cycles. The pr ocedure of this research consisted of planning, action, observation, and reflection. Ther e were two types of data in this research namely qualitative and quantitative data. Qualitative data were obtained by making notes and photographs of all the activities in the pr ocess of teaching and learning. Quantitative data were obtained from the students’ scores of pre-test and post-test. The result of the research showed tha t: (1) the use of pre reading activities could give many improvements of the st udents’ reading comprehension which include: (a) the students could easily compre hend English text. (b) the students could easily identify main idea, detail inform ation, reference, word meaning based on context and cohesive device of reading te xt . The improvement of students’ reading comprehension could be seen from the mean score of pre-test, post- test 1 and post test 2. The mean score of pre-test conducted be fore research was 61. The mean score of post test 1 of the first cycl e was 74 and the mean score of post test 2 of the second cycle was 83. (2) The use of pre-reading activities gave many positive im pacts in the teaching and learning process which include: (a) the use of pre-reading activities could motivate the students to read and create enjoyable lessons, (b) the class was noisy but very active in making and checking prediction of text, (c) The st udents were very enthusiastic in reading a text because they have a reason for reading provided by pre- reading activity, (d) the stude nts could join the lesson enjoyably when they got involved with the topic