The use of chunking technique in improving reading comprehension of narrative text : A pre-experimental study at the ninth grade students of SMPN 31 Bandung

Every student in the school is learning about English. Moreover, comprehending reading text is one of the purposes that are written in the Curriculum and syllabus 2013 of ninth grade. When reading a text, the students still get difficulty to build a good comprehending. To get the information of the text, the students spend much time because of translating every word of the text. Chunking is one of the techniques which gives good influence on the learning process. Chunking technique can make the reading process more manageable and the readers easier and to get the information of the text. It becomes a teaching technique which encourages students to understand the text easier. This research focuses on the effectiveness of using chunking technique on EFL students in reading comprehension of narrative text. The purposes of this study are: 1) to know the students’ reading comprehension of narrative text before using chunking technique, 2) to know the students’ reading comprehension of narrative text after using chunking technique, and 3) to find out the improvement of students’ reading comprehension of narrative text before and after using chunking. Furthermore, this research employed a quantitative method with a pre- experimental study. The data was collected by using pre-test and post-test. This research was conducted in IX grade of the academic year 2019-2020 at SMPN 31 Bandung, which is located in Jl. Bojong, Karannunggal, Bandung, West Java. The participants of this research were 30 students of grade IX-J as a sample which was selected by non-random sampling. The participants also are given four treatments during conducting the research. The result of the test was calculated using analytical statistics. The result of the data analysis shows that the average score of students’ reading comprehension of narrative text before using chunking technique is 50.53 in the poor category, while the average score of students’ reading comprehension of narrative text after using chunking technique is 67.20 with fairy enough category. It shows that the students’ reading score got improvement with a score different 16.67. Furthermore, the result of the calculating t-test is t count 8.01 is higher than t table 1.45. In brief, H0 is rejected, and Ha is expected. It shows there are improvement and significance improvement of students’ reading comprehension of narrative text after being taught using chunking technique. In conclusion, this research shows that the chunking technique gives improvement to students’ reading score. It is essential for the teacher to implement chunking technique in the learning process as alternative reading material in a teaching-learning strategy. Also, this research is recommended for those who want to make the reading process more manageable and do not spend much time