THE EFFECTIVENESS OF EXTENSIVE READING ACTIVITY IN INCREASING READING COMPREHENSION AND READING SPEED OF ENGLISH TEXTS

ABSTRACT

 Busthomi, Nanang Rohmat, 2009.

The Effectiveness of Extensive Reading Activity in Increasing Reading Comprehension and Reading Speed of English Text in the Ninth Grade Students of MTs Negeri Pamekasan 1.

Key words: extensive reading activity, reading comprehension, reading speed.

This study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of extensive reading activity in increasing reading comprehension and reading speed. The major questions to be answered were:

(1) "Do the ninth grade students of MTs Negeri Pamekasan 1 who are given additional extensive reading activity achieve higher reading comprehension compared to the students who are not given additional extensive reading activity?"

(2) "Do the ninth grade students of MTs Negeri Pamekasan 1 who are given additional extensive reading activity achieve higher reading speed compared to the students who are not given additional extensive reading activity?" 

The tentative answers of the two major questions, then, were formulated in the form of hypotheses saying that:

 (1) the students who are given additional extensive reading activity achieve significantly higher reading comprehension than those who are not given additional extensive reading activity,

(2) the students who are given additional extensive reading activity achieve significantly higher reading speed than those who are not given additional extensive reading activity. The design of the present study was a quasi-experimental study with non-randomized control group pretest-posttest. The subjects of this research study were 72 students of the second semester of the ninth grade students of MTs Negeri Pamekasan 1. Thirty six students were assigned in the experimental group while thirty six students were assigned in the control group.

The research instrument was in the form of 30 multiple-choice items, which covered the subject matter of reading comprehension for the second semester of the ninth grade students. Both the experimental and control groups were given one pretest, the experimental group was, then, taught reading comprehension and reading speed by using additional extensive reading activity while the control group was taught reading comprehension and reading speed without using additional extensive reading activity. After that, both groups were given a posttest, which was also used as a pretest. The data, furthermore, in the form of the gained scores, were analyzed by using One-Way ANOVA.

All of the obtained F-ratios in testing hypotheses were significantly higher than the critical value at p<.05 (df 70). The obtained F-ratios of the first hypotheses were respectively 16.25 for the first hypothesis, and 27.69 for the second hypothesis. Since the obtained F-ratios were significantly higher than the critical value 3.98, these revealed that there were enough evidences to reject null hypotheses. Since the null hypotheses,

 (1) reading comprehension achievement of the students that was given additional extensive reading activity is not significantly higher than that was not given additional extensive reading activity,

 (2) reading speed achievement of the students that was given additional extensive reading activity is not significantly higher than that was not given additional extensive reading activity, were rejected, consequently, the working or alternatives hypotheses were accepted.

Hence, it could be judged that the students who were given additional extensive reading activity achieved higher reading comprehension and reading speed than those were not given additional extensive reading activity. In other words, teaching reading by giving additional extensive reading activity was more effective than teaching reading without giving additional extensive reading activity.

 Based on the findings of the present research study, some suggestions were addressed to English teachers and future researchers. English teachers should take into consideration the benefits of additional extensive reading activity in increasing reading comprehension and reading speed. For future researchers, it is suggested to take the findings as the basis in conducting some other researches in the same topic.