Exploring Direct Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA) strategy in teaching reading comprehension skill in recount text to EFL students

Reading is one of the important skills in English that EFL students must master. Basically, reading comprehension refers to the process of obtaining information, understanding ideas, finding the author's point of view, and seeking evidence from their point of view, which may be needed to write their essay. Related to the conditions and situations at SMAN 1 Jasinga, most of the students have difficulty in learning English, especially in reading comprehension. Considering the problem, various strategies have been recommended to improve students' reading comprehension skills in recount texts. One of the strategies implemented is by using Direct Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA). This study explores the DRTA strategy in teaching reading comprehension skills in recount texts to EFL grade X students. This study aims to discover the students' reading comprehension using Direct Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA) strategies. Mainly, this study was intended: 1) to observe the process of implementing the DRTA strategy in EFL classrooms in Bogor. 2) to investigate aspects of reading comprehension skills found to foster when using DRTA. 3) to explore EFL students' responses after learning with the DRTA strategy. This study applied a case study design of a qualitative method. There are 36 participants of the ten-grade class at SMAN 1 Jasinga in the Academic Year 2022/2023. The researcher was obtained through observation, document analysis, and interviews to gain the data. The results of this study indicate that first, the implementation of the DRTA strategy in teaching recount text to improve student's reading comprehension by using the DRTA procedure strategy: Pre-reading, guided silent-reading and post-reading shows that students enjoy the learning process using the DRTA strategy. Second, this research investigates aspects of reading comprehension skill found during learning using DRTA. Based on the result, the main idea is the aspect of reading comprehension that can be fostered when using DRTA strategy because most students’ answers (21) times incorrectly. Third, most of the students give a positive response after learning using the DRTA strategy. Students get benefits such as helping them understand the text, find the main idea and learn new vocabulary. Moreover, students assume that learning to use the DRTA strategy is straightforward. In conclusion, this research shows that implementing the DRTA strategy in teaching reading comprehension, especially in recount text, helped improve the students’ reading comprehension. Then this research was recommended to the English teacher to help the students who were passive and struggling to comprehend the text