The influence of partner reading strategy on students' reading ability in finding main ideas: A pre-experimental study at the eleventh grade of SMA Muhammadiyah 4 Bandung

This research concerned with the implementation of partner reading strategy in teaching reading specifically in finding main ideas of analytical exposition text. The background of this research is the low ability of students’ reading ability. The cause is that the students cannot interpret what they read and cannot make the connection between text and what they have already known. The students need feedback from the others such as listening to other students perspectives. The teacher must be more creative and innovative in teaching and learning process. There are interesting strategies of taching reading, one of them is Partner Reading Strategy. This research has three purposes: (1) to find out the students’ reading ability in finding main ideas achievement before using partner reading strategy. (2) to find out the students’ reading ability in finding main ideas achievement after using partner reading strategy. (3) to find out the significant difference between students’ reading ability in finding main ideas before and after using partner reading strategy This research was conducted at eleventh grade of SMA Muhammadiyah 4 Bandung. Furthermore, the method uses in this research is pre-experimental method with XI IPA 1 become the sample. The instrument of this research is reading text. The test consist of thirty items uses pretest and posttest in which the students are asked to choose the correct answer of multiple choices about main idea in analytical exposition text. The result of the data analysis showed that the mean score students’ reading ability after using partner reading strategy is 72.39, and the mean score students’ reading ability before using partner reading strategy is 45.46. The counting of paired t-test shows that t_count is 9.70 and t_table is 2.05 with the significance level 5%. It means t_count is higher than t_table (9.70>2.05), so that (H_a) is accepted and (H_0) is rejected. There was significant difference between students’ reading ability before and after using partner reading strategy. Therefore, it is suggested that English teachers to use partner reading strategy in teaching reading in analytical exposition text. Thus, based on the research result, partner reading strategy is needed to become an alternative strategy to improve students’ reading ability