The Use of Jakarta Post Online Article in Teaching Reading to Improve the Students’ Critical Thinking Skill: A Case Study at the Fourth Semester Student of English Education Department of UIN Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung

The Use of Jakarta Post Online Article in Teaching Reading to Improve the Students’ Critical Thinking Skill (A Case Study at the Fourth Semester Student of English Education Department of UIN Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung). This study is intended to discover students’ ability in utilizing their critical thinking to comprehend the text they read, particularly in teaching reading activity. In the reading classroom, Jakarta Post online article is used as the authentic material to encourage the students’ critical thinking. Then this paper is written to achieve the objectives: 1) to find out the process of teaching reading by using a Jakarta Post online article to improve the students’ critical thinking skill and 2) to find out the cores of critical thinking emerge in the students’ answers to the questions related to the article. This study employed a qualitative research design, particularly a case study. The participants are the fourth-semester students of class A at the English Education Department of UIN Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung. To obtain the data, observation and document analysis were used. The observation was conducted in the reading classroom. The observation data were transcribed, categorized into central themes, and interpreted into a description form. The observation data was aimed to discover the process of teaching reading using Jakarta Post article to improve students’ critical thinking. Moreover, the nine students’ final test papers were gathered for the source of document analysis. The data of students’ papers were analyzed by using the theory proposed by Facione (1990; 1998) to find out the core of critical thinking skills emerge in the students’ answer to the questions related to the article. The nine final test papers were selected purposively based on the high, middle, and low achieving students of class A. The finding shows that the process of teaching reading is established by implementing the four features of critical thinking classroom, such as frequent evaluative questions, encouragement of active learning, developmental tension, and fascinating with the contingency conclusion (Browne & Freeman, 2000). Moreover, the data from students’ paper shows the strength and the weakness. In term of strength, the high and middle-achieving students could present the cores of critical thinking skills such as interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and explanation in their answers. However, students’ texts were weakened by the low achieving students who could not present all of those cores. Some of them merely present interpretation, evaluation, and explanation in their answers. In summary, the finding shows that the use of Jakarta Post online article in teaching reading could improve the students’ critical thinking skill. Then it was recommended that the next research offers the various methodologies how to involve critical thinking skills in the classroom and the more variety of authentic materials should be used to encourage the students’ critical thinking