A CRITICAL REVIEW OF SUTARSA, I WAYAN. 2011. THE EFFECT OF SHARED READING STRATEGY USING LITERARY TEXTS UPON THE READING COMPREHENSION OF THE THIRD YEAR STUDENTS OF SMP NEGERI 3 SIDEMEN IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR OF 2010/2011. UNPUBLISHED THESIS OF UNDIKSHA

A CRITICAL REVIEW OF SUTARSA, I WAYAN. 2011. THE EFFECT OF SHARED READING STRATEGY USING LITERARY TEXTS UPON THE READING COMPREHENSION OF THE THIRD YEAR STUDENTS OF SMP NEGERI 3 SIDEMEN IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR OF 2010/2011. UNPUBLISHED THESIS OF UNDIKSHA
Written by: Luh Ketut Sri Widhiasih


Reading is an important skill in learning a foreign language. Students can improve their English and expand their vocabulary outside of class by reading on their own. Unfortunately, many teachers believe that teaching reading to children causes them to lose their motivation to learn English (Pang, 2003). This view is usually based on the teacher’s experience in using reading materials in the course book that are often long, boring, and/or filled with difficult words. However, reading can be fun and motivating if the language and the tasks are at the right level for the students and if the teacher uses the appropriate method and approach.

Sutarsa carried out this study based on the consideration and assumption that until this time the students’ achievement in English especially in reading is still poor. Sutarsa said that the teaching strategy and type of the text should be taken into account because in Indonesia English teaching at school emphasizes on teaching reading. Sutarsa’s assumption stated that an effective reading strategy should provide students with a mix of demonstration, guidance and opportunities to practice what the students know. Also text selection should be able to give students many nearer aspects of the target language. Teacher should provide students with authentic reading material which students can find in their daily life. Considering that fact and assumption, Sutarsa carried on this study in order to find the best material as well as teaching strategy that an English teacher can practice.

In the literature review, Sutarsa reviewed about the definition of literary text, the nature of Shared Reading Strategy (SRS), and the nature of reading comprehension. First, he restated Klein’s concept of literary text. Then, he continued to review a little bit about the type of literary text by Hughes and the importance of using literary text from some linguists. Second, Sutarsa reviewed Winch’s concept about the nature of SRS. Winch states that SRS is an effective teaching strategy where teacher can practice. This strategy is usually done in a whole class or shared situation. SRS involves students in structures demonstrations of what effective readers know and do. During this procedure, teacher composes the knowledge and skills needed to interpret a text constructed by someone else explicitly. The most important point in SRS is that all the times the teacher will have particular learning outcomes in mind for the class and for individual students as he or she models and demonstrates ways of interacting with texts that will provide students with independent learning skills. Teacher usually uses the same texts for several lessons and on each occasion a different teaching point will be addressed. Principally, SRS is a collaborative learning activity that opens possibilities as much as possible for students to maximize their learning capacity. Finally, Sutarsa reviewed about the nature of reading comprehension.

After reviewing some literature, Sutarsa came to the methodology of his research. First, he stated that the design of his study was a Posttest-Only Control-Group Design in which it is categorized into an experimental study. Second, he stated that his study was conducted at the third year students of SMP Negeri 3 Sidemen in the academic year of 2010/2011. The number of sample was gotten by applying random sampling. It was decided class IXA and class IXB as samples of study. They were 67 together. Then, Sutarsa explained the procedures of his study. He implemented the steps of conducting SRS that he has gotten from Winch, et al. in 2006. The procedures consisted of preparation of experiment, the implementation of the experiment, and the end up of the experiment. In the preparation section, he prepared learning media, lesson plans, and instruments (reading comprehension post-tests). While, the implementation were carried out four times of meeting; three meeting for treatments and one meeting for post-test. During the implementation, the experimental group was taught by SRS using short literary text and the control group was taught by conventional strategy using descriptive text. At the end of experiment, both groups were tested by reading comprehension post test.

In the findings, Sutarsa categorized his data into two groups: (1) the data of students’ reading comprehension that were taught by SRS using short literary text; (2) the data of students’ reading comprehension that were taught by conventional reading strategy using descriptive text. Statistically, it could be seen that students who were taught by SRS had minimum scores 50 from 100, and had maximum scores 95 from 100. The standard deviation was 12.063 and means was 76.930. Meanwhile, students who were taught by conventional reading strategy had minimum scores 32 from 100, and had maximum scores 68 from 100. The standard deviation was 9.921 and means was 51.57. The study shown that there was significant effect of SRS using literary texts upon the reading comprehension of the third year students of SMP Negeri 3 Sidemen in the academic year of 2010/2011. This was provided by the gain of means scores of the experimental class more than those of the control class. Also, the category of scores between the two classes showed a significant difference after the scores were consulted to the Criteria Ideal Theory (CIT). The means score of the experimental class was 76.93 categorized Very High, while the means score of the control class was 51.54 categorized High Enough. Based on observation during the study, the students seemed to be more enthusiastic and interested in the learning process when they were taught with SRS.

This study is very important to the reviewer as a student of post graduate. This study inspires the reviewer to do the research in the same field. The reviewer thinks that there is not a research about this yet in her area. Besides for the reviewer as the post graduated student, this study will be benefit for the English teacher to help them choose the best type of reading text and teaching reading strategy to be given to the students so that they are able to achieve the best result in reading comprehension.

Sutarsa can therefore be criticized here in term of their research’s structure. Sutarsa has already constructed their abstract well. He has already fulfilled the criteria of a good abstract cited in Koopman (1997) that stated Abstract must be a fully self-contained, capsule description of the paper. The Abstract helps readers decide whether they want to read the rest of the paper. Therefore, enough key information (e.g., summary results, observations, trends, etc.) must be included to make the Abstract useful to someone who may to reference your work.

Meanwhile, Sutarsa began his research with unclear background. The background did not give any overview about what will be talked in the next part of this research. The way Sutarsa presented their background also was not so smooth. The idea jumped from one to another without any intention to it. The idea messed around and rounded about. It seemed too long for the background. Ideally, a background should give brief information about the reasons of making that research, problems that will be discussed in the content and what the purpose of conducting that research. In this research, Sutarsa did not success to bring those points in his background. The reviewer suggests beginning your background by clearly identifying the subject area of interest. Do this by using key words from your title in the first few sentences of the background to get it focused directly on topic at the appropriate level. This insures that you get to the primary subject matter quickly without losing focus, or discussing information that is too general.

Sutarsa wrote their review of literature from specific to general. For example, he wrote about Literary Texts first, then continued by the nature of SRS, The nature of reading comprehension, and finally the definition of reading. The judgment of what is general or specific is difficult at first, but with practice and reading of the scientific literature you will develop firmer sense of your audience. Also, Sutarsa only put somebody’s statement without gave some interpretation to that statement. It looked incoherent. In the same part, Sutarsa wrote only a sentence in a paragraph. It can be suggested to Sutarsa to give some elaboration to his sentence. Maeve (2011) stated that a paragraph is a unit of thought that develops an idea. A traditional paragraph contains a topic sentence that states the idea to be developed, plus additional sentences that develop the idea stated by the topic sentence. Maeve (2011) also said that a paragraph will contain more than one sentence. Reviewer suggests Sutarsa to add more sentences to support the idea on that paragraph. Moreover, Sutarsa, also did not link that statement to his study. He only wrote somebody’s statement and enough, nothing correlated with his study. Sometime, Sutarsa forgot to put reference on some idea that he take from somebody. Although he put reference, the reference did not match with the reference list at the back of this thesis. This can be a kind of plagiarism. Further, he forgot to add some empirical reviews related with his study. It is important to review some empirical study about the same topic, so that the researcher can have hypothesis about what they will research.

There are still many mistype words and grammatical mistakes in Sutarsa’s thesis. It can not be tolerable in a thesis. Reviewer suggests that the writer should do proof-reading to crosscheck whether there is still a mistype word or grammatical mistake in his thesis. Moreover, in some parts of Sutarsa’s thesis was unclear. He only put idea without elaboration on it. It is better to explain what Sutarsa means by putting that sentence, so the reader will get the meaning. Because of those unclear sentences, many times the reviewer lost in interpreting this thesis and it seemed difficult to understand it.

Finally, since SRS using literary texts has been proved to give better result for students in reading comprehension, the reviewer suggest English teacher to give more attention to the use of a such text and implement SRS in teaching reading. Also, literary text that is used in this study had given good impressions to the students, it is better to English teacher to variant his collection of text by adding literary text. Further, other researchers should do more research on this since this study still had some limitations.

Overall, Sutarsa result of study is really significant for some elements of community, such as teachers, students, schools, and others researchers. Meanwhile, he has some mistakes of the way they presented his work. It should be revised by him, so that this research can be the best source for other researchers.

References

Koopman, Philip. 1997. How To Write An Abstract. Carnegie Mellon University. PDF file.

Maeve, Maddox. 2011. How Many Sentences in a Paragraph?. http://www.dailywritingtips.com/how-many-sentences-in-a-paragraph/ Pang, S. Elizabeth and Friends. 2003. Teaching Reading. http://www.ibe.unesco.org/fileadmin/user_upload/archive/publications/EducationalPracticesSeriesPdf/prac12e.pdf