DEVELOPING INTERACTIVE MULTIMEDIA FOR TEACHING READING TO GRADE VIII STUDENTS OF SMPN 2 MERTOYUDAN IN THE FIRST SEMESTER

The objectives of this research were: (1) to find out the target needs and the learning needs of the students at Grade VIII of SMPN 2 Mertoyudan, and (2) to develop an English interactive learning media for teaching reading to students at Grade VIII of SMPN 2 Mertoyudan. This was a research and development (R & D) study. The subjects were Grade VIII students of SMP Negeri 2 Mertoyudan Class VIII A that consisted of 16 female and 15 male students. This research was conducted by following Jolly and Bolithos’s model in Tomlinson (1998) with some modification. The first step was needs analysis done by distributing questionnaires to the students. The result of the needs analysis was the basis for developing a course grid. The course grid was used as the guideline to develop the first draft of the reading materials. The first draft was evaluated by an expert and then revised based on the feedback obtained from the evaluation. The instruments to collect the data were the needs analysis questionnaire and the expert judgment rating scale. The data from the needs analysis were analyzed quantitatively using frequency and percentage and the quantitative data obtained from the expert judgment were analyzed through descriptive statistics. The results of the needs analysis showed that the students needed materials for reading comprehension which were attractive and interesting and related to their daily life. Therefore, this study developed three units of materials which were implemented in the interactive multimedia. Each unit consists of Get Ready, Let’s Read, Let’s Do More, Let’s Reflect and Let’s Review activities with 16 tasks focusing on vocabulary building, grammar (the use of the simple present tense, adjectives and prepositions and text construction. The mean score of all aspects of the developed materials was 3.85, which was very good. It meant that the developed interactive learning multimedia was appropriate