Improving Students ’ Achievement in Reading Descriptive Text through Reciprocal Teaching Strategy

This paper describes how to improve students’ achievement in reading descriptive text through reciprocal teaching strategy. The sample of this paper are 21 Students of VIII Grade in Senior High School of PTPN IV Bah Jambi. The pretest data were distributed before the treatment of Reciprocal Teaching Strategy and the post-test data were taken after the treatment of teaching-learning reading descriptive text by using Reciprocal Teaching Strategy. The finding shows before the treatment of Reciprocal Reading Strategy, the basic knowledge of students at grade VIII SMP Swasta PTPN IV Bah Jambi was low since the mean of pre-test data was 25,95 and after the treatment, the students’ achievement in reading descriptive text was good where the mean of post-test data was 69,76 so that the mean difference before and after the treatment was 43,81.


I. Introduction
Reading is about understanding written text.Reading is also the window of knowledge.By reading, people may get much information by understanding the content of the text and may know everything in the world.Vassiliou (2011:7), the written word is present everywhere and therefore reading is a fundamental skill which is increasingly needed in almost every sphere of life.A wide range of reading skills including digital reading are essential for an individual's personal and social fulfillment for taking an informed and active part in society and exercising full rights of citizenship.
Understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible.Reading is a constant process of guessing, and what one brings to the text is often more important than what one finds in it.This is why, from the very beginning the students should be taught to use what they know to understand unknown elements whether these are ideas or simple words so that teaching reading is very important for students.Vassiliou (2011:7), the successful acquisition of reading skills during childhood and adolescence is therefore fundamental.Furthermore, good literacy skills are the basis of a child's entire school career; without them academic success is unattainable.Students are expected to be able to get some knowladge and information from the text.
To do reading is not an easy activity for Indonesian students, of course because English is not their mother language.Indonesian language and English are difference; they are different in vocabulary, pronunciation, structure, and even in dialect.So, reading is very complex.As stated by Scanlon, et.al, (2010: 9 & 346) reading is a complex process that requires the analysis, coordination, and interpretation of a variety of sources of information.Reading is also a complex process and children react to instruction in very different ways.Moreover, Pang, et.al (2003:21) also argued that teaching reading is difficult work.Teachers must be aware of the progress that students are making and adjust instruction to the changing abilities of students.
Those difficulties are also faced by students at grade VIII SMP Swasta PTPN IV Bah Jambi.From the writer's pre-observation and interview, students faced many difficulties when

Teaching Reading Comprehension
How to teach reading skills to children whose mother language is not the language of instruction is, therefore, a crucial issue; such as Indonesian students.But, the important of English nowadays has forced Indonesian government to put English a compulsory lesson in curriculum started from playgroup level till university.
Teaching English covered teaching the four language skills; they are Listening, Speaking, Writing, and Reading.Reading is one language skills that should be mastered by students to become skillful person in the world because by reading, they can get more information from every side of the world.So, teachers should give their heart on how to improve students' achievement in reading comprehension and do not let the students just read the text as they know.As stated by Klingner, et.al (2007:6), knowing how to read, or decode, words is not a small part of the reading process; it is a critical link whose absence inhibits understanding.When students are beginning to read, they may have difficulty.
As students progress through reading, they may have difficulty reading, too.The goal is to identify, prior to reading, the key words that students are likely to have challenges decoding and teaching them so that students can read these words and use them in discussions and written expression.Teachers can provide support by teaching the decoding skills students need initially to read more basic words.After students can read basic words and have the fundamental phonics principles to decode words, then teachers need to provide instruction in the decoding of more complex and multisyllabic words.
According to Anderson, quoted in Nunan (2003:68), teaching reading usually has at least two aspects.First, it can refer to teaching learners who are learning to read for the very first time.A second aspect of teaching reading refers to teaching learners who already have reading skills in their first language.Pang, et.al (2003:21) stated that teaching reading is difficult work.Teachers must be aware of the progress that students are making and adjust instruction to the changing abilities of students.It is also important to remember that the goal of reading is to understand the texts and to be able to learn from them.So, in teaching reading comprehension to the students, teacher should also know the principles of teaching reading so that the teaching-learning process runs effectively and efficiently.Anderson, quoted in Nunan (2003:74) Anderson, in Nunan (2003:76) explained that teacher must work towards finding a balance between assisting students to improve their reading rate and developing reading comprehension skills.It is very important to understand that the focus is not to develop speed readers, but fluent readers.One focus here is to teach readers to reduce their dependence on a dictionary.Skills such as scanning, skimming, predicting and identifying main ideas get students to approach reading in different ways.e. Teach reading strategies Anderson, quoted in Nunan (2003:76) defined that strategies are the tools for active, self-directed involvement that is necessary for developing communicative ability.To achieve the desired results, students need to learn how to use a range of reading strategies that match their purposes for reading.A good technique to sensitize students to the strategies they use is to get them to verbalize their thought processes as they read.
f. Encourage readers to transform strategies into skills Anderson, in Nunan (2003:77) argued that strategies can be defined as conscious actions that learners take to achieve desired goals or objectives, while a skill is a technique that has become automatic.This characterization underscores the active role that readers play in strategic reading.As learners consciously learn and practice specific reading strategies, the strategies move from conscious to unconscious; from technique to skill.g.Build assessment and evaluation into our teaching Anderson, quoted in Nunan (2003:77)

Types of Reading
There are many types of reading and some of them are described by Dakowska (2005:205-207), as following: a. Silent Reading It may be done in segments and mixed with more social, interactive forms of work with the text, helping the teacher to monitor the effects of silent reading.

b. Reading Aloud
Reading aloud by the language learner, on the other hand, provides the teacher with an insight into the way the learner segments the material into phrases and reconstructs the text structure.

c. Extensive reading
In extensive reading, the learner does not use external sources of information during this rather fluent process, but derives considerable orientation from the vast contexts with in by the passage.Extensive reading has the advantage of the quantity of input at the expense of the processing precision.

d. Intensive reading
It is connected with a more in-depth study and analysis of a relatively limited a mount of text as well as the use of external resources to supplement the learner's knowledge deficits.Intensive reading can lead to precision, but at the expense of the slower pace of the task.

e. Skimming
It is used to get a general idea of the nature of the text.For this purpose the reader makes use of important structural clues in the text, such as its appearance, the title, list of contents, abstracts, subtitles, topic sentences, illustrations, conclusions, where applicable.

f. Scanning
It involves searching rapidly through a text to find a specific point of information.

Reciprocal Strategy
Reciprocal reading strategy is one of reading comprehension strategies that can improve the students' achievement in reading comprehension.As stated by Palincsar and Brown, quoted in Frank, et.al (2006:62), Reciprocal strategy is an interactive dialogue between the teacher and students regarding segments of text.The dialogue involves four strategies: predicting, question generating clarifying, and summarizing.Vassiliou (2011:37) argued that reciprocal teaching focused on where the teacher explains and demonstrates four comprehension strategies; question generation, summarization, clarification and prediction, and supports this through dialogue with the pupils as they attempt to gain meaning from text.
Besides that, Palincsar & Brown, quoted in Carr, et.al. (2004:196) defined that reciprocal strategy is a powerful teaching strategy consisting of a dialogue between a student leader and classmates as they read segments of a text together.In dialogue, students use four separate strategies to increase their comprehension.The four strategies are summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting, and they are used in that order.For Klingner, et.al (2007:131), reciprocal teaching was originally designed to improve comprehension for middle school students who could decode but had difficulty comprehending text.
Students learn to use the four strategies of prediction, summarization, question generation, and clarification and to apply these while discussing text with the teacher and their peers.The teacher first models how to implement the strategies.Next, through prompts, questions, and reminders, the teacher supports students' efforts to use the strategies while reading and discussing text.As students become more proficient, the teacher gradually reduces this assistance.The premise is that teaching students to use the four strategies collaboratively in a dialogue will help them bring meaning to the text as well as promote their internalization of the use of the strategies, thus ultimately improving their reading comprehension.
Based on quotations above it can be concluded that reciprocal strategy is a strategy that purposes of having students read carefully for understanding written text.

a. Parts of Reciprocal Strategy
Reciprocal reading comprehension strategy is conducted by four parts of strategies; summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting (Carr, et.al, 2004:196).

b. Summarizing
Summarizing helps student synthesize information, determine the main idea and key details, and infer relationships among concepts (Carr, et.al, 2004:197).

c. Question Generating
Question generating helps students identify the key ideas in the text.As they develop questions, they solidify their understanding of the main points (Carr, et.al, 2004:197) their understanding and take steps to restore meaning (Carr, et.al, 2004:197).

e. Predicting
Predicting requires students to recall relevant background knowledge about a topic and form a hypothesis about what the author will discuss in each section of the text.
Students then read with a purpose, linking new and prior knowledge as they infer information and refine their predictions (Carr, et.al, 2004:197).

Descriptive Text
The text type which is used in the research was Descriptive Text.Learning descriptive text for students was very important.As cited in English K6-Modules (2001:85), the ability to describe someone or something in detail is an important skill that can contribute to a number of different text types.Wardiman, et.al (2008:16) argued that a descriptive text is a text that describes the features of someone, something, or a certain place.Cited in English K-6 Modules (2001:85), descriptions focus our attention on the characteristic features of a particular thing.The subject might be a person, or a thing.It might be impressionistic or imaginative, or an objective description.
Based on the quotation above it can be concluded that descriptive text is a text that describes things or certain thing, such as person, animal, and thing.

a. The Language Features of Descriptive Text
Cited in English K-6 Modules (2001:85), common grammatical patterns of a description include: b.Use of particular nouns, example: 1) Elephants and tigers 2) The bears and the monkeys c.Use of detailed noun groups to provide information about the subject, example: 1) Tigers are the biggest of all cats.
2) Tigers stripped coat gives them good camouflage when they hunt.

d. Use of a variety of types of adjectives, example:
1) Describing, for instance: Tigers are intelligent.
2) Numbering, for instance: Most of tigers live in Africa.
3) Classifying, for instance: Monkeys live in groups called troops.e. Use of relating verbs to provide information about the subject, example: 1) Bears are large and powerful.
2) Monkeys are clever mammals.f.Use of thinking and feeling verbs to express the writer's personal view about the subject or to give an insight into the subject's thoughts and feelings, example: 1) Bears have a good sense of smell.
2) Tigers love meat to eat.

g. Use of action verbs to describe the subject's behavior Example:
1) Bears use their long trunks almost like an arm, to put food and water inmouths.
2) Monkeys eat plants.h.Use of adverbials to provide more information about this behavior, example: 1) Elephants live in Africa and Asia.

III. Methodology 3.1 The Design of the Study
The study was designed into quantitative method by following pre-experimental of one group pre-test and post-test design.The design of one group pre-test and post-test design is described below:  Arikunto (2006:131) argued that sample is partly or representative of population that will be searched.In this study the writer took the sample of the study by using purposive sampling technique because the school has renovation so that the head minister permitted the writer to take one class as the sample of the research.Due to the condition, the writer used lottery to choose the sample.The lottery consisted of three rolling pieces of paper, where two papers were empty but the third paper contained number one.Each leader of the class fetched one rolling paper and those who of the leaders got the paper contained number one became the sample of the study.Here, the writer found that the leader of class VIII -1 got the contained paper so that class VIII -1 was the sample of the study with 21 students.

The Technique of Analyzing Data
To analyze the data, the writer followed some statistical techniques, as following: a. Scoring the students' multiple choices.b.Tabulating pre-test scores and post-test scores.c.Finding frequency and normality of the test by using SPSS Version 16.0 for Windows.d.Finding the mean of pre-test and post-test by means of formula below: improvement on students' achievement in reading descriptive text at grade VIII SMP Swasta PTPN IV Bah Jambi in academic year 2018/2019.b.If to < tt so, hypothesis null (Ho) is accepted and hypothesis alternative (Ha) is rejected.It showed that the use of Reciprocal teaching strategy does not give significant improvement on students' achievement in reading descriptive text at grade VIII SMP Swasta PTPN IV Bah Jambi in academic year 2018/2019.c.The degree of freedom (df) was df= N-1 = 21-1= 25.Then, the critic value for ttable was compared with ttable 5%= 2,086 and ttable 1% = 2,845.

Data Analysis
Data of the study concerned on Improving Students' Achievement in Reading Descriptive Text through Reciprocal Teaching Strategy.The study was conducted at grade VIII SMP Swasta PTPN IV Bah Jambi in academic year 2018/2019.
The data of the study consisted on pre-test data and post-test data.The pre-test data were distributed before the treatment of Reciprocal Teaching Strategy and the post-test data were taken after the treatment of teaching-learning reading descriptive text by using Reciprocal Teaching Strategy.
The data analysis was conducted to know the use of Reciprocal Teaching Strategy on students' achievement in reading descriptive text at grade VIII SMP Swasta PTPN IV Bah Jambi in academic year 2018/2019.So, the data analysis was started by scoring the students' multiple choices, tabulating pre-test scores and post-test scores, finding frequency and normality of the test by using SPSS Version 6.0 for Windows, finding the mean of pre-test and post-test, finding the standard deviation of the test, finding the standard deviation difference of the test, finding the standard error difference, finding mean difference, finding standard error mean difference, and then testing hypothesis.The data analysis was presented as following: a.The Pre-Test Data To know the prior knowledge of the students in reading descriptive text, the writer distributed pre-test at the begiinning was tabulated as follows, Based on the table above, it was found that from the number of sample 21, the total score of the pre-test was 545.

1) The Frequency of the Test
The frequency of pre-test data was calculated to know how often points existed in the pre-test data.The calculation was conducted by using SPSS Version 16.0 for Windows, as following: Based on the table above, it was found that before the treatment of Reciprocal Reading Strategy, the lowest score was 10 and the highest score was 55 from 20 items of multiple choices.

2) The Normality of the Test
The normality of the pre-test data was calculated to measure whether the distribution of the data is normal or not.Based on the calculation used by SPSS Version 16.0 for Windows, the normality of the pre-test data was tabulated at the following table: Table 5 The interpretation of the normality was compared with Shapiro-Wilk by means of criterions below: a.If sig>α (0, 05), the pre-test data is called normal distributed.b.If sig<α (0, 05), the pre-test data is called not normally distributed.Based on table above it was found that Sig>α (0, 075>0, 05) so that the pre-test data is normally distributed.

3).The Mean of the Test
Mean pre-test was calculated to know the students' basic knowledge in reading descriptive text before the treatment of Reciprocal Reading Strategy.So, the mean of the pretest data was: Based on the calculation above it was found that before the treatment of Reciprocal Reading Strategy, the students' achievement in reading descriptive text was low since the mean of the pre-test data was 25,95.

4) The Standard Deviation of the Test
The standard deviation of pre-test data was calculated to determine how the data is distributed in a sample and how close an individual data point to the mean or average sample value.So, it was calculated as following: Based on the table above, it was found that from the number of sample 21, the total score of the post-test was 1465.

1) The Frequency of the Test
The frequency of post-test data was calculated to know how often points existed in the post-test data.The calculation was also conducted by using SPSS Version 16.0 for Windows, as following: Budapest International Research and Critics in Linguistics and Education (BirLE) Journal Volume I, No 1, November 2018, Page: 29-48 e-ISSN: 2655-1470(Online), p-ISSN: 2655-2647 (Print) www.bircu-journal.com/index.php/birleemails: birle.journal@gmail.combirle.journal.qa@gmail.com42

2) The Normality of the Test
The normality of the post-test data was also calculated to measure whether the distribution of the data is normal or not.So, the normality of the post-test data was tabulated at the following table: The interpretation of the normality was also compared with Shapiro-Wilk by means of criterions below:  If sig>α (0, 05), the post-test data is called normal distributed.
 If sig<α (0, 05), the post-test data is called not normally distributed.
Based on table 4.6 above it was found that Sig>α (0, 177>0, 05) so that the posttest data is normally distributed.

3) The Mean of the Test
Mean post-test was also calculated to know the students' improvement on the students' achievement in reading descriptive text after the treatment of Reciprocal Reading Strategy.So, the mean of the post-test data was: Budapest International Research and Critics in Linguistics and Education (BirLE) Journal Volume I, No 1, November 2018, Page: 29-48 e-ISSN: 2655-1470(Online), p-ISSN: 2655-2647 (Print) www.bircu-journal.com/index.php/birleemails: birle.journal@gmail.combirle.journal.qa@gmail.com43 Based on the calculation above it was found that after the treatment of Reciprocal Reading Strategy, the students' achievement in reading descriptive text was good since the mean of the post-test data was 69,76.

4).The Standard Deviation of the Test
The standard deviation of post-test data was also calculated to determine how the data is distributed in a sample and how close an individual data point to the mean or average sample value.So, the standard deviation of post-test data was calculated as following Diagram 2. Histogram of Pre-test Data Based on the diagram 4.1 above, it was found that the number of the students were 21 students and the mean was 25,95 while the standard deviation was 13,193.Then, students who got score 10 consisted of 3 (14,3%) students and students who got score 15 were 3 (14,3%) students.Students who got score 20 consisted of 5 (23,8%) students and students who got score 25 were 2 (9,5%) students.Students who got score 30 consisted of 2 (9,5%) students and students who got score 35 were 2 (9,5%) students.There was 1 (4,8%) student who got score 40 and who got score 45 consisted of 1 (4,8%).Then, student who got score 50 consisted of 1 (4,8%) student, while student who got score 55 was 1 (4,8%) student.

The Standard Deviation Difference
The standard deviation difference was calculated to know how much difference variability there were in pre-test data and post-test data.So, the calculation was: : 3645,24 So, the standard deviation difference was: Based on the calculation above, it was found that the standard deviation difference before and after the treatment of Reciprocal Reading Strategy was 13,50.

The Standard Error Difference
The standard error difference was calculated to show how much difference variability there are in scores.So, the standard error difference between the pre-test data and the posttest data was calculated as following:

d. Work on increasing reading rate
classified those principles as following: a. Exploit the reader's background knowledgeBackground knowledge includes all of the experiences that a reader brings to a text: life experiences, educational experiences, knowledge of how texts can

Strive for continuous improvement as a reading teacher
argued that assessing growth and development in reading skills from both a formal and an informal perspective requires time and training.Both quantitative and qualitative assessment activities should be included in the reading classroom.h.
Nunan (2003:77)explained that reading teachers need to be passionate about their work.They should view themselves as facilitators, helping each reader discover what works best.
. d. ClarifyingClarifying is self-monitoring strategy that encourages students to restate what they have read to make sure it makes sense to them.If it does not, they stop and reread to figure out why it is not making sense.The process helps students identify text factors that impede their understanding, such as difficult concepts, new vocabulary, and unclear referents.With self-monitoring, students learn to assume responsibility for

Table 1 .
The Design of the Study

The Population and Sample of the Study a. The Population of the Study
Arikunto (2006:130)argued that population is a set or collection of all elements possessing one or more attributes of interest.And, in this research the population of the study was taken from VIII SMP Swasta PTPN IV Bah Jambi with 63 students as tabulated below:

Table 2 :
Population of the Study

Table 3
The Pre-test Data (X)

Table 4
. Normality of the Pre-test Data

Table 6 .
The Post-test Data (Y)

Table 7 .
Frequency of Post-test DataBased on the table 7 above, it was found that after the treatment of Reciprocal Reading Strategy, the lowest score was 55 and the highest score was 80 from 20 items of multiple choices.

Table 8 .
Normality of the Post-test Data