The effect of semantic mapping technique and vocabulary explanation technique on the reading comprehension achievement of the fifth grade students of SDK Yohannes Gabriel Surabaya

Nowadays, English has become one of the important languages in the world. Realizing the importance of English, Indonesian has tried to implement English in its educational curriculum as early as possible. As the consequence, English has become a compulsory subject that is taught starting from elementary school up to senior high school. The basic skills in learning English are listening, speaking, reading and writing. Reading is the basic skill that can make the students active in exploring and constructing new knowledge. However, in reality many students have difficulties in relating their own idea with the information given. Most of the teachers in Indonesia do not give attention to the relation between the words in a sentence in a reading passage with the students’ prior knowledge. As the result, the students will feel difficult in comprehending the reading passage (Zhang, 1997). Dealing with the fact that most of the elementary schools have difficulty in comprehending the reading passage, this study is designed to compare the effect of teaching reading by means of Semantic Mapping technique and vocabulary Explanation technique on the reading achievement. This study is carried out mainly to find out whether there is a significant difference in the reading achievement of the student who are taught by means of Semantic Mapping technique and those who are taught by means of Vocabulary Explanation technique. This study is based on the reading theory (Nuttal, 1996:10), meaningful learning theory (Ausubel, 1965 in Brown 2000:83) and Semantic Mapping (Carrell, 1983; Zaid, 1995; Porter, 2006). The writer in this study uses a quasi-experimental design which applies a non-randomized Pre-test-Post-test control group design. This is chosen since three is a consideration that it is impossible to randomize the subjects. First, the writer did the first and second try-out at SDK Santa Theresia II class VA and VB. After did the first and second try-out, the writer used two classes of the fifth grade students of SDK Yohannes Gabriel Surabaya in the academic year 2007-2008 as the subject of her study. The treatment was given three times for both groups. The Experimental group (VA) uses Semantic Mapping technique and the control group (VB) uses Vocabulary Explanation technique. There were three reading passage used as the material in the treatment. Moreover, the writer constructed the reading comprehension questions exactly the same materials were used in the Experimental and Control groups. A pre-test is administered before conducting the treatment and a post –test after the treatment to both of group. There were 27 items in the research instrument. It was administered with a time limitation of 40 minutes. After collecting and analyzing the data by using t-test for 5% significance of difference between two means for independent sample, the writer found out that the mean scores of the pre-test of the Experimental group was 18.2759 while the control group was 20.8485. The exact tobservation obtained for the pre-test was - 2.717 and the ttable (.05, 60) was 1.671. Since tobservation -2.717 was lower than ttable 1.671 (the level of significance determined), the calculation above showed that the pre-test mean scores between the two groups were not significantly different. This result showed that the two groups had more or less reading ability at the beginning of the treatment administration. The means of the post-test of the Experimental group was 21.8276 while the Control group was 23.4242. It showed that the exact tobservation obtained for the post-test score was -2.186. The ttable (.05, 60) was 1.671. Since tobservation -2.186 was lower than ttable 1.671 (the level of significance determined), the alternative hypothesis was rejected; the post-test mean scores between the two groups were not significantly different. It means that Semantic Mapping technique in the experimental group as same as Vocabulary Explanation technique in the control group. The Semantic Mapping technique did not influence the students’ reading comprehension achievement. It was determined from the mean scores of their reading post-test, which were not significantly better than the mean scores of their reading pre-test