THE EFFECT OF KWL (THE KNOW - WANT TO KNOW - LEARN STRATEGY) INSTRUCTION TO IMPROVE STUDENTS' READING ABILITY AT SMPN 8 MALANG

As students, reading is the basic skill that should be mastered in order to gain the English knowledge, such as syntax and phonology. When the students have problem in reading, such as hard to understand the main idea, the students’ development in learning second language is hindered. There are many strategies that could be used by the teacher to help the students to read. One of the new instructions is KWL. KWL instruction is an instruction that enable the students to explore what they know, what they want to know and what they learn about a topic. The core of KWL focuses on the process of reading. Based on the previous argument that KWL had proven to be a successful instruction in reading class, the researcher would like to measure whether KWL is effective to improve the students’ reading skill, the researcher used descriptive text in grade 7th SMPN 8 Malang. This study employed quantitative method pre-experimental design. This research was intended to test a certain theory against its implementation in the field, using one sample using pretest and posttest called pre-experimental study. It usually involved three steps. (1) Administering a pretest measuring the dependent variable. (2) Applying the experimental treatment. (3) Administering a posttest again to measure the dependent variable. The researcher used purposive sampling. The purposive sampling was sampling method that judged the sample based on the representative from the population. The researcher chose such sampling method because the sample is the representative of the population. Furthermore, the sampling, based on the teacher’s testimony, had the highest proficiency in English than the other class taught by the teacher. The researcher used achievement test as the instrument. Based on the finding, the researcher concludes that the students who taught using KWL have higher score on their reading ability than the students who are not taught using KWL. The posttest average score is higher than the pretest average score. However, the researcher conducts a statistical analysis using an SPSS software to support the claim. The result proves that the posttest score was statistically significant higher that the pretest. And for the final the researcher suggest that the teacher should employed KWL in their reading class