Directed Reading Thinking Activity ………
Jo-ELT (Journal of English Language Teaching) Fakultas Pendidikan Bahasa dan Seni
Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris IKIP, June 2023. Vol.10 No.1 | Page 121
Brown (2004) Reading becomes the most crucial skill in any educational setting. Therefore
reading skills are very influential in our lives.
According to Brown (2001), four English skills have to be learned by the student. Such
as communicate by speaking, listening, writing, and reading. Reading, listening, speaking,
and writing are language abilities. Reading is a learning competencies that have to be learned
by students. Snow (2002) defines reading comprehension as a process of interacting with and
simultaneously creating definitions through relationships and written language participation.
Rasinski (2010) definition of comprehension is the act of consciously creating meaning
through dialogue between the reader and the sentence. Reading comprehension is also critical
for improving reading efficiency and enjoyment, as well as for assisting with all other
subjects in life both personally and professionally. Also, it can aid students in understanding
the text’s goal. The student has studied various texts when learning English, especially
narrative text. The text of a narrative is one that explains a series of events in chronological
order or in relation to one another. Narrative texts are typically imaginative, which means
they are not real or exist only in the author’s imagination. A narrative text, according to
Martin (2000), is one in which an agent tells a story. Reading narrative texts is very important
for students because narrative texts are always related to problems in the story and end with
problem-solving, so stories and narrative texts provide students with a lot of moral messages.
However, most students continue to struggle with reading English because they do not
understand the text. Common difficulties are non-Indonesian languages which lead to
difficulties in reading English, lack of vocabulary, mastery of pronunciation, etc. But in
reality, reading is not as easy as it seems. Reading requires a good understanding so that
someone can interpret information correctly. Sometimes students have to read the text twice
or think twice to understand it, even though it takes a lot of time for students. This is
especially useful for students who are not motivated to study. Reading must be too difficult
for students. According to Harmer (2003), students have predicted that the entire experience
will frustrate them and reduce their motivation to learn. This attitude is frequently the result
of illiteracy. This is primarily due to students being assigned reading texts that are too
difficult for them to be interested in, teachers do not generate interest, and students believe
that reading is always boring. The most common causes are usually students who have
difficulty in reading comprehension, namely, lack of confidence, lack of desire from within
them to learn reading comprehension, lack of support from the family, parents, and the most
common thing is students don’t like English and it’s fast. Bored when learning reading
comprehension in class. The causes of students who develop bored quickly are frequently the
consequence of the teacher’s education and science strategies.
Based on observations at the Islamic Junior High School Miftahul Jannah, the
researchers discovered that English teachers continued to use the old method, which only
focused on explanation. As a result of teachers' lack of creativity in adopting learning
methods, students become bored quickly when learning English, resulting in difficulty
reading, a lack of vocabulary, difficulty understanding English texts, and a lack of motivation
to learn to read.
According to the issues raised above, the researcher will use DRTA strategy to address
the issue of reading comprehension in students. DRTA is a strategy that can improve a
student's understanding. Balajthy (2003) in his book says Russell Stauffer in 1975 developed
the directed reading thinking activity (DRTA) as a more appealing alternative to the lesson
plan model used in most basic guided reading courses. The directed reading thinking activity,
approach directs students’ involvement in the text because they have to participate and
demonstrate during reading in class. The Student can find the central textual concept by
learning reading comprehension. According to Arief (2019), DRTA is a reading strategy in
which readers use their personal experience to help the author's concept come to life. The
