THE USE OF AUTHENTIC TEACHING MATERIALS TO
IMPROVE READING COMPREHENSION
(A Classroom Action Research in SMP Muhamadiyah 8 Surakarta of the
Academic Year 2008/2009)
Salman Alfarisi K2202046: THE USE OF AUTHENTIC TEACHING
MATERIALS TO IMPROVE READING COMPREHENSION (A Classroom
Action Research in SMP Muhammadiyah 8 Surakarta of the Academic Year
2008/2009). Teacher Training and Education Faculty. Sebelas Maret University.
2010.
This study is based on the problem that was the low reading comprehension
of the 8th
grade students of SMP Muhamadiyah 8 Surakarta of the Academic Year
2008/2009. It is focused on improving students’ reading comprehension through the
use of authentic teaching materials. The researcher conducted classroom action
research from July to September 2009. The subject of this research is the students of
class VIII A of SMP Muhammadiyah 8 Surakarta of the Academic Year 2008/2009.
The researcher conducted the teaching learning activities in two cycles. Each
cycle consisted of four steps: planning, implementation, observation, and reflection.
In cycle one, the researcher applied authentic materials in order to drag the students
interested in reading so that they enjoyed in their reading class. By enjoying the
reading, their reading comprehension might increase. In this cycle, the students’
reading comprehension increased but not optimally yet. Moreover, there were still
problems that arose in this cycle. For example: some students still got difficulties in
finding the main idea, they got difficulties to find out the appropriate meaning of
words, and they still failed to find any informations from the text. In cycle two, the
researcher tried to solve the previous problems by focusing on the teaching materials
given and adding the medium in the teaching learning process, which was group
discussion. In this cycle, the researcher was able to solve the problems.
From the explanation above the researcher concluded that after he conducted
the actions the students’ reading comprehension increased optimally. Before he
conducted the actions the mean score of the pre-test was 55.5, and after doing the
actions the mean score of the post-test was 77.6.
The result of the research showed that after implementing the authentic
teaching materials, the students’ level of interest in the reading class increased.
Finally, their reading comprehension improved well