Improving students’ reading comprehension through role play (An Action Research at the Eighth Grade of SMPN 16 Surakarta 2008/2009)

Oleh :
Lia Permata Sari - K2205038 - Fak. KIP

ABSTRACT This thesis is written to 1) identify whether and to what extent role play improves students’ comprehension on genre and 2) describe class situation when role play is applied in the English class. The method used in this research was collaborative action research between the Junior High School English Teacher (Teacher B) and the researcher. The research was conducted in two cycles from January 10th until March 30th 2009 at the eighth grade of SMPN 16 Surakarta. The research data were collected by using techniques of qualitative data collection which include: field notes, diary, photograph and test. The qualitative data were analyzed through constant comparative method and the statistic data were analyzed through students’ score calculation, mean of pre test and post test. The research findings proved that role play in teaching and learning genre could improve the students’ comprehension of recount and narrative genre and the classroom situation of teaching and learning the genres. The Improvement of students’ comprehension included: 1) Students could identify the setting of time and setting of place in recount and narrative genre; 2) Students could construct some sentences into good grammatical arrangement of short recount and narrative genre; 3) Students could identify the characters in recount and narrative genre; 4) Students could catch the main idea of each paragraph in the recount genre; and 5) Students could identify the generic structure of the texts. The improvement of classroom situation included: 1) Students were not noisy in TL English in the classroom; 2) Students tended to be active learners; 3) Students were willing to speak English; 4) Students paid attention toward their teacher’s explanation; and 5) Students were diligent to do homework. Besides the two findings above, there were other findings as follows: 1) Students did various activities and various exercises; 2) Students could interact with their friends and collaborate with them; and 3) Students could be responsible to their jobs.