Improving Students’ Achievement in Reading Comprehension by Applying Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL)

This research aims to find out the significant improvement of the students achievement in reading comprehension by applying Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL). The subject of this research was X grade of SMK Bandung-2 at Academic Year 2017/2018. It consisted of one class with 30 students as respondents. The objective was to discover the significant improvement of the students’ achievement in reading comprehension by applying Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL). This research was conducted by using classroom action research. The instruments of collecting data were observation sheet, and Reading tests. The research finding is shown of that there was an improvement on the students’ reading achievement on narrative text from each cycle. It was showed from the mean of pre-test which was 56.5 with persentage 0%. After CTL was applied in the first cycle, there was an improvement of the result of the students’ in reading comprehension the mean was 69.16 with persentage 33.3%. It means that there was an improvement from pre-test to post-test I was 33.3%. And for the second cycle after reflection on the first cycle, there was an improvement of students’ mean which was 85 with persentage 100%. Based on the result showed that there was an improvement after applying CTL was 66.7%. It concluded that students’ achievement in reading comprehension by applying contextual teaching and learning (CTL) improved.


I. Introduction
Reading is central to the learning process. By reading activity, people may gain important that is not presented by teachers in the classroom. The reader is an active participant who has an important interpreive function in the reading process. It means thats in the cognitive model, people as readers are more than passive participants who receive information while an active text makes itself and its meanings known to him/her. Actually,the act-of-reading is a push and pull between reader and text. As readers, people actively make, or construct meaning; what people bring to the text is at least as important as the text itself.
Reading process is something being not understandable well by the students. Many of them think that reading is only about uttering the words printed in the textbooks silently or loudly depending on they are reading for themeselves or other people. Reading means to undertand the meaning of printed words i.e. written symbols. Reading is an active process, which consist of recognition and recognition and comprehension skill.
In curriculum 2013, it expected that the students can analyzing, applying, and comprehending the story text in their daily life. In addition the students have to understanding the passage in reading text. Moreover, the students have to able find main idea in the passage on reading text because reading programs may help students develop their language skill necessary for succes. Nevertheless, it is to implement an effective reading program, especially in countries where English is treated as foreign language. The success of implementing reading programs will depend on the students' interest.
However in reality, based on the researcher's observation in teaching English during PPL at SMK Swasta Bandung-2 Bandar Setia, it found that 40% students lack vocabulary in English study. It was shown from their habitation in reading that they were lazy to read the text. Furthermore, 40% students were unable comprehend the reading materials in the text so that their understanding on material is poor. In addition 10% students had low motivation either instrintic motivation or exstrintic motivation. Besides, 10% students was not interest in learning English especially reading on narative text. And the teacher still using conventional method in teaching learning English especially in reading text. It made the students feel bored in learning English. It cocluded that students achievement in reading comprehension on narrative text was verry bad and many problems in the classroom.

Reading Comprehension
Reading is about understanding written texts. It is a complex activity that involves both perception and thought. Reading consists of two related processes; word recognition and comprehension. Word recognition refers to the process of perceiving how written symbols correspond to one"s spoken language. Comprehension is the process of making sense of words, sentences, and connected text. Readers typically make use of their background knowledge, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, experience with text and other strategies to help them understand written text. Reading comprehension is the process of constructing meaning by coordinating a number of complex processes that include word reading, word and world knowledge, and fluency". Hence, reading is an activity in understanding written texts. For success in reading comprehension, the reader has to get the sense of knowledge and understanding from each passage in the text. Besides that, the reader has to be able to construct her thoughts and perceptions to find the meaning in each sentence, each paragraph and each passage (Aprizani, 2016).
Reading comprehension is one of the Bahasa Indonesia skills that must be developed at school. This is because the reading comprehension has become something important and indispensable for students because students' success largely depends on their ability to read. If students' reading comprehension is lacking, it is possible to fail in learning or at least students will have difficulty in making progress. On the other hand, if the student has the ability to read with a good understanding, of course, they would have a better chance to succeed in learning. Reading comprehension ability in this context refers to the ability of students to grasp the information or ideas presented by the authors through readings so he can interpret ideas that they have discovered. States that the purpose of reading comprehension is part of the process of reading comprehension. That is characterized by the process when the readers get the messages and meaning of the text thay have read. Furthermore, the message or the meaning conveyed can be in the forms of information, knowledge, and even happy or sad expression messages.
Similarly, according to Smith quoted by Somadyo (2013) that reading comprehension is essentially a process of building understanding of a written discourse. This process occurs in a way to match or connect schemata of knowledge and experience that have been previously owned with the content of information of the discourse in order to build a good understanding of the discourse that has been read. Suggests that reading comprehension is an activity or activities undertaken by the reader to connect new information with old information in order to gain new knowledge. In addition, it is also done to link information and gain new knowledge.
There are some techniques in teaching reading supported by Johnson, 2008), namely: a. Help children fall in love with books: reading is a pleasurable act.When I do it, I want to do more of it. There are wonderful stories and interestingcharacters found in books. b. Create a space every day for sustained, silent reading: Just like learning to play a musical instrument, children who are learning to read get better at it by practicing.
c. Allow children to make choices about their reading material. Choice is important in helping readers grow. Reading is more pleasurable when we are able to make choices about what we read. d. Connect reading pleasure to reading practice. A simple behaviorist principle is that if we find something to be enjoyable (a positive reinforcement), we are more likely to do that thing again. e. Keep your reading program simple. In all areas, rigor is not the same as complexity. Just because a literacy program is complicated, uses a lot of big words, contains flashy graphs and pictures, has a detailed scope and sequence, includes an elaborate assessment plan, and costs a lot of money doesn't mean it is of any worth. f. Keep instruction simple. Good teachers make things seem as simple as possible. In this way they are like gymnasts. Gymnasts are able to perform complicated moves and make them look simple. g. Make reading like real life. The kind of reading and writing we have children do in school should be very much like the kind that adults do in real-life situations. h. Include talk and other forms of social interaction. Talking and social interaction enhances learning of any kind Children need to talk to each other about what they're reading and share their ideas and insights with others. As comprehension increases, so does appreciation of reading for both knowledge and pleasure. Constructing meaning from text or spoken language is not a separate literacy skill, but a merging of all acquired prior knowledge, personal experience, and vocabulary with the strategies of deductive and inductive reasoning and making connections. To be successful at reading comprehension, students need to actively process what they read. That processing skill requires that students have automatic reading skills and fluency, necessary vocabulary, and text-appropriate background knowledge. Successful comprehension is augmented when students have practice with strategies for monitoring their understanding, increasing their intrinsic interest in the text, and creating goals and purpose for their reading. To comprehend text, the reader must be able to decode words or recognize words and access text integration processes to construct meaning and retain the content of the words long enough for it to stimulate their stores of related information in their longter memories.
Beginning comprehension instruction builds on children's linguistic and conceptual knowledge and includes explicit instruction on strategies such as summarizing, predicting, and selfmonitoring for understanding. Additional comprehension skills that must be taught and practiced include assessing and connecting with students' background knowledge, preteaching of new vocabulary, clarifi cation of key concepts, linking to prior knowledge and personal relevance, instruction in strategies, teacher-guided and student-centered discussions about the content, previewing, predicting, summarizing, selecting main ideas, self-monitoring, and teacher feedback for understanding.

Level of Comprehension
Thomas Barrett quoted by Brassel (2008) has suggested the following three types of action with his three-level taxonomy of reading comprehension, namely: a. Literal Comprehension: Literal comprehension, the lowest of the three levels, requires a reader to be able to retell or recall the facts or information presented in a text. Names of characters and details of the setting are examples of literal comprehension. The information required for literal comprehension comes largely from the text itself. Recall comprehension can easily be evaluated.
In responding to a literal question, the reader either can recall the information from the text or he or she cannot. b. Inferential Comprehension: Inferential comprehension, the next level, refers to the ability of a reader to take in information that is inferred or implied within a text. If a text indicates that a character is carrying an umbrella while walking down a street on a cloudy day, you can infer that the character is expecting rain. Inferential comprehension is more sophisticated than literal comprehension because it requires the orchestration and manipulation of information from the text as well as information that resides within the readers their background knowledge. c. Critical Comprehension: Critical or evaluative comprehension, the third and highest level in the taxonomy, involves making critical judgments about the information presented in the text.
Were the characters reputable and honest in their actions? Did the selection offer the reader new information, new insights, or added enjoyment? Were the characters authentic? Was the literary quality of the text high? Answers to such questions require a high level of interaction between information from the text, the reader, perhaps other people with whom the reader has interacted, or even other texts the reader has read. Moreover, in-depth analysis and critical thinking are necessary to make informed judgments and evaluations. Because responses to inferential and critical-level questions are highly dependent on the reader's own background, interest, and disposition, determining a reader's level and the quality of a reader's inferential and critical comprehension is not easy.

Definition of Narative Text
According to Knapp (2005) that narrative is also a 'big' or macro genre in that it can easily accommodate one or more of the other genres and still remain dominant. Countless books have been written about narrative and it is outside of the scope of this chapter to deal with anything more than the types of narrative that primary school-age students are expected to write. Our aim, therefore, is to provide a sound basis for teaching the basic techniques of narrative writing so that students may proceed beyond primary education to develop, and even break out of, some of the generic boundaries established here.
The genre of the text in this unit is narrative. The function of narrative genre is to amuse, entertain, and to deal with actual or vicarious experience in different ways. In some cases, narratives are set in historical ones. In writing this historical narrative, writers perhaps lead readers to think about social issues of a particular period of time. Narratives deal with problematic events which lead to a crisis or turning point of some kind, which in turn find a resolution. There are many types of narrative. They can be imaginary, factual or a combination of both. They many include fairy stories, mysteries, science fiction, romances, horror stories, adventure stories, fables, myths, and legends, historical narratives, ballads, slice of life, and personal experience. However, narratives can also be written to teach or inform, to change attitudes or social opinions e.g. soap operas and television dramas that are used to raise topical issues. Narratives sequence people or characters in time and place but differ from recounts in that through the sequencing, the stories set up one or more problems, which must eventually find a way to be resolved (Dirgeyasa, 2014).
Actually, every genre has its own characteristic in farms of the theoritical structure and textual elements, the narrative text also has its own theoritical structure and textual elements. Then each element of textual element has its own function. It states what the elements is for. The theoritical structure and textual elements of narrative writing consists of 1) Orientation 2) Complication, and 3) Resolution.

Conventional Method
Conventional method is concerned with the teacher being the controller of the learning environment. Power and responsibility are held by the teacher and they play the role of instructor (in the form of lectures) and decision maker (in regards to curriculum content and specific outcomes). They regard students as having 'knowledge holes' that need to be filled with information. In short, the traditional teacher views that it is the teacher that causes learning to occur. According to Vierra (2008) states that conventional, teacher-centred teaching and lecture is the most common teaching behaviour found in schools worldwide. Teacher-centred teaching can be

(a) Sharing information that is not easily found elsewhere, (b) Presenting information in a quick manner, (c) Generating interest in the information, and (d)
Teaching learners who learn best by listening. However, teacher-centred teaching also presents several challenges, including: (a) Not all learners learn best by listening, (b) Keeping learners' interest is often difficult, (c) The approach tends to require little or no critical thinking and (d) The approach assumes that all learners learn in the same impersonal way. From the explanation above, it can be concluded that conventional method is based on a traditional approach to the target language, which regards the language as a body of grammatical rules and an enormous number of words that are combined according to the rules.

Definition of Contextual Teaching and Learning
Satriani quoted by Khaefiatunnisa (2015) define contextual teaching and learning as "a learning philosophy that emphasizes students' interests and experiences". Contextual teaching and learning is a conception of teaching and learning that helps teachers relate subject matter content to real world situations; and motivates students to make connections between knowledge and its applications to their lives as family members, citizens, and workers and engage in the hard work that learning requires. Therefore, it can be inferred that CTL is an approach which relates materials to the students' experience, interest, and its application in their real world outside classroom. By applying CTL, the students can see the relevance of the materials they learned in classroom with its application in their daily lives.
Seven main components of CTL that explained above are the main requirements in classroom teaching learning process. Below are the procedures how to apply CTL in the classroom teaching learning process. 1. Improve the ynderstanding that student will learn more effectively through self learning, selfinquiring, and self-constructing using their own knowledge and experience. First, Teacher need to encourage student to actively involved in learning process and use the students' idea end experience top conduct the learning and whole learning unit. 2. Do the inquiring activity to achieved desired competences in reading activity. In this step, the teacher presents thereading material (e.g. in the form of certain pictures or visual aid that describes) in which the students need to analyze it by their self. Try to challenge the students with their own ideas and conceptions to interpret it. Allows them to present their own idea and encourage them to apply their own ideas, experience and interest to direct learning process. 3. Create learning community or learning in groups. This step will help student to improve their leadership and their cooperation among the student. In this step, the students discuss the material with their friends and then they present it in front of the class. To make the learning process more effective, teacher need to encourage the students to express their own ideas before the teacher did it. 4. Quetioning as a learning tool, it is useful for improving student's curiosity. The teachers allow the students to ask something related to the material after the discussion and presentation session finished. It will give them more understanding in material discussed. 5. Do the reflection in the end of learning to make students feel that they have learned something.
Provide enough time to reflect, analyze, and respect all ideas that are expressed by all students. Teacher need to engage the students in searching the information that can be applied in solving the problem in their own life. Therefor, the learning process will give them many benefits in their real life. .

III. Research Methodology
This research was conducted at X grade of SMK Swasta Bandung-2 Bandar Setia, was located at jln. Pengabdian no.72 Bandar Setia Kec. Percut sei tuan Kab. Deli Serdang. The reason choose this school because based on the researcher observation in that school it was found many students got the problems in reading comprehension, and the students had not good motivation in studying English, especially in reading comprehension.
In collecting the data, the researcher used test and observation sheet as instrument of this research. The test was multiple-choice test which consisted of 20 questions of multiple choice test that related to the texts they read. The time was 30 minutes for them to answer and finish all the questions in the test.

IV. Discussion
The data of this research were qualitative data included of observation sheet and quantitative data included of test wich had been gathered within in two cycles. Cycles I consisted of three meetings and cycle II consisted three meetings. So, the totally of two cycles were six meetings in this research. The data were taken from X grade students of SMK Bandung-2 wich consisted of 30 students. For it made information clearly, it was show in data analysis below.
Qualitative data consisted of observation sheet where observation sheet were filled by english teacher as collaborator of this research based on the observation sheet, it was concluded that teaching learning process by applying Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL) runwell. The situation in giving motivation in teaching learning process was very good. In addition Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL) created good environment and interaction between students and teacher in classroom wich became the students briefly and enthusiastic in saying their opinion. Besides, students' interaction in group disscusion was very good were the teachers' ability in organizing the class and giving explanation about material was very good. From the result of observation sheet, it can be concluded that Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL) can improve students achievement in reading comprehension especially narrative text and created good environment in classroom enjoyable, comfort, and focused. To more information clearly, it could be seen in appendix six.
In this test, there was some problems in cycle I. So, the researcher continued in cycle II with three meetings.

1) Planning
After the researcher evaluated the result of students in cycle I, the researche refised lesson plann in cycle II. In cycle II, the researcher prepared picture as media in teaching learning process. It aimed to repair the problems in cycle I.

2) Action
Firstly explained and remind about narrative text to the students, than gave a text in narrative text, next asked the students to find the main idea of each paragraph, and than discuss about main idea briefly, and ask the students to sit in their groups of five, than gave each group narrative text in there different genre, and next asked the groups to identify the narrative texts by stating the social purpose, generic structure, and language features, and next asked the groups to find the main idea of the paragraphs in narrative text, than asked the students to discuss about their answers in groups, and than asked the students to summarize the lesson to check their understanding.

3) Observation
After applying CTL in cycle II, there was improvement from the students in learning reading comprehension especially in narrative text. During observation in cycle II, students attention and From the analysis above, students' achievement in reading comprehension of narrative text was low. The mean of students was 56.5 and to look the number of students' who were competent in reading comprehension test was calculated by applying the following formula: From analysis, the students' achievement in reading comprehension was low. The mean of students was 56.5 nobody students passed in pre-test session (0%). It can be concluded that the students' achievement in reading comprehension is still low. It continued to the next cycle in posttest I. The students' score in post-test I could be seen in table 2 below.
From the table above, it show that the total and means score was good The total score in posttest I was 69.16 and the number of students were 30 students so the mean score in post-test I using formula: From the analysis above, students' achievement in reading comprehension of narrative text was good. The mean of students was 69.16 and to look the number of students' who were competent in reading comprehension test was calculated by applying the following formula: From analysis, the students' achievement in reading comprehension was categorized still low because just 10 students passed in post-test I session (10%). However, there was improvement in teaching reading comprehension especially in narrative text by using Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL). That is why, the researcher continued to cycle II and it could be seen in table 3 below. From the analysis above, students' achievement in reading comprehension of narrative text improved. The mean of students was 85 and to look the number of students' who were competent in reading comprehension test was calculated by applying the following formula: From analysis, the students' achievement in reading comprehension improved which proven from 30 students got up 70 point in post-test II (100%). It can be concluded that the students' achievement in reading comprehension on narrative text improved by using Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL). To know the improvement students' scorefrom pre-test, post-test I, and posttest II could be seen in The Result of Students' Score was improvement students achievement in reading comprehension were the total of score was 2075 and the mean score was 69.16. In post test one there was 10 students passed got up 70 point. In post test two the total students was 2550 and the mean score was 85. In post test two all of students got 70. It concluded that CTL can improve students' achievement in reading comprehension in narrative text. And CTL success applied in teaching reading.

Chart 1. The Result of Students' Score
From the Result in Data Analysis, it could be found in this research that there was improvement in students reading comprehension by applying Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL). It was show from the mean of pre-test which was 56.5 with persentage 0%. After CTL was applied in the first cycle, there was an improvement of the result of the students' in reading comprehension the mean was 69.16 with persentage 33.3%. It means that there was an improvement from pre-test to post-test I was 33.3%. And for the second cycle after reflection on the first cycle, there was an improvement of students' mean which was 85 with persentage 100%. And based the result of observation showed that students aenthusiasm and motivation in learning reading comprehension especially narrative text was very good. In addition, the students brave in delivering their ideas and opinion in classroom and they can create good environment in learning reading comprehension by applying Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL).

V. Conclusion
Having analyzed the data, it was found that Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL) significantly improvement the students' achievement in reading comprehension of narrative text. The conclusion could be drawn there was improvement of students' achievement in reading comprehension having analyzed the data that have presented in the previous chapter. It is showed by the mean of the students. In the pre test showed 56.5 with 0% who got 70 and the first cycle showed 69.16 with 33.3% (ten students) who got 70. The second cycle showed 85 with 100% (thirty students) who got 70.