EEJ 8 (1) (2018) 10 - 17 English Education Journal http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/eej The Effectiveness of Graphic Organizers and Gist Strategies on Students with Different Reading Habits in Reading Comprehension Abdul Ayiz, Warsono Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia Article Info Accepted 15 Desember 2018 Approved 21 January 2018 Published 15 March 2018 ______________ Keywords: GOs strategy, GIST strategy, reading comprehension, and reading habits. Abstract _______________________________________________________ This study is an experimental research with a factorial design addressed to investigate the effectiveness of graphic organizers and GIST strategy to enhance reading comprehension of students with good and poor reading habits. The samples of this study were the twelfth graders of MA Sholahuddin Demak in the academic year of 2016/2017. There were two classes that became the samples of the study. Graphic organizers strategy was used in the first experimental group, and GIST strategy was used in the second experimental group. To answer research questions number one up to four, T- test was used; meanwhile, two-ways ANOVA with F-test at the 5% (0.05) level of significance was used to answer the fifth up to seventh question. The result of this study showed that graphic organizers and GIST strategy were effective to enhance reading comprehension of students with good and poor reading habits. In addition, there is no significant difference of the use of graphic organizers and GIST strategies to enhance reading comprehension for students with good and poor reading habits. In addition, there is no significant difference of reading habits in using graphic organizers and GIST strategies to enhance reading comprehension. At last, there is no interaction among graphic organizers, and GIST strategies, reading comprehension, and reading habits. © 2018 Universitas Negeri Semarang Correspondence Address: Unnes Kampus Kelud Utara III, Semarang, 50237,Indonesia E-mail: ayizunness@gmail.com p-ISSN 2087-0108 e-ISSN 2502-4566 Abdul Ayiz & Warsono / English Education Journal, 8 (1) (2018) 10 - 17 11 INTRODUCTION One of the biggest challenges in teaching English as foreign language (EFL) is how to teach reading skill. Reading comprehension can be very essential when it can lead the students to discuss and question about what a particular text means and to explore the text for greater understanding. A text in linguistics refers to any passage, spoken or written, of whatever length, that does form a unified whole (Halliday and Hasan, 1976). The text whether written or oral is a multidimensional structure which has some parts that we can learn and identify. Texts consist of syntax, lexicon, grammar, morphology, phonology, semantics and other information. The text is usually introduced in the form of reading class. Teaching reading can be fun and exciting, but many times can be frustrating as well, especially when it is taught for EFL senior high school students who do not have good reading habits in learning English.Teaching reading is a complex process involving decoding skills, fluency and reading comprehension.Grabe and Stoller (2002, p. 4) state that in academic settings, reading is perceived to be the central means for learning new information and accessing alternative explanations and interpretations. Furthermore, reading becomes the base for the synthesis and critical evaluation.Reading is also purposeful and it requires active involvement on behalf of the readers, as readers have specific goals to achieve, when reading a text (Koda, 2005). In short, the purpose of teaching reading is the reading comprehension. Reading is considered beneficial for language acquisition (Harmer, 2007, p. 99).Reading is also considered an interactive and a thinking process of transferring printed letters into meaning in order tocommunicate certain message between the writer and the reader (Chotimah & Rukmini, 2017). According to Nunan (2003, p. 68) in Rosyita & Faridi (2017, p.80), reading is a fluent process of readers combining information from atext and their own background knowledge to build meaning, and the goal of reading is comprehension. Meanwhile, comprehension refers to theability to go beyond the words, to understandthe ideas and the relationships between ideasconveyed in a text (Rosari & Mujiyanto, 2016, p. 1).Salmi(2001, p.698) added that reading comprehension is an interaction between what the text provides and what the reader brings to it when he reads. Furthermore, Pardo (2004, pp.272-280) stated that reading comprehension is a process in which readers construct meaning by interacting with text through the combination of prior knowledge and previous experience, information in the text, and the stance the reader takes in relationship to the text. Reading comprehension is also defined as the ability to interact with words and ideas on the page in order to understand what the writer has to say (Bunner, 2002, p. 51). It includes the meaningful interpretation of written language and an interaction of the reader, the text and the situation in which the text is read. Similarly, Snow (2002, p. 10) explained that reading comprehension is the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language. The words extracting and constructing are used to emphasize both the importance and the insufficiency of the text as a determinant of reading comprehension. She adds that comprehension entails three elements such as the reader, the text and the activity in which comprehension is a part. However, to be able to efficiently extract and construct the text which is read, some strategies need to be applied. Browns (2001, p. 306) explained that there are at least ten strategies for reading comprehension. The first one is to identify the purpose in reading. When reading a text, students sometimes do not know why they read. As the result, the information that is accessed or understood retain for temporary and tend to disappear easily. Efficient reading consists of clearly identifying the purpose in reading something. By doing so, Abdul Ayiz & Warsono / English Education Journal, 8 (1) (2018) 10 - 17 12 students know what they are reading and looking for and able to leave out the potential distracting information in the text. The second is to use graphemic and patterns to aid in bottom-up decoding (especially for beginning level learners). At the beginning levels of learning English, students might find difficuties in learning to read when they have to make correspondence between spoken and written English. In many cases, students have become acquinted with oral language and have some difficulties in learning English spelling conventions. Thus, students may need hints and explanations about certain English orthographic rules and peculiarities such as the short vowel sound in bat and the long vowel sound in late. The third is to use efficient silent reading techniques for relatively rapid comprehension. This strategy is usually applied for intermediate to advanced levelstudents due to their mastery of sufficient vocabularies and grammatical patterns. The intermediate-to-advanced level students need not be speed readers, but we can help them enhance efficiency by teaching a few silent reading rules like not trying to pronounce each word, trying to visually perceive more than one word at a time, and skip over a word which is not really crucial to global understanding. The next strategy is skimming the text for main ideas. Skimming gives readers the advantages of being able to predict the purpose of the passage, the main topic, or message, and possibly some of the developing or supprting ideas. The fifth is scannning the text for specific information. The purpose of scanning is to extract specific information without reading through the whole text. Then, using semantic mapping or clustering can also enhance students’ reading comprehension. Readers can easily be overwhelmed by a long string of ideas or events. The strategy of semantic mapping, or grouping ideas into meaningful clusters, helps the reader to provide some order to the chaos. The seventh strategy is guessing when we aren’t certain. Learners can use guessing to their advantage to guess the meaning of a word, a grammatical relationship such as a pronoun reference, a discourse relationship, implied meaning between the lines, a cultural reference and content messages. The next strategy is analyzing vocabulary in terms of what we know about it by looking for prefixes, suffixes, roots, and grammatical contents which possibly have the clues for that word. The last two strategies for reading comprehension are by distinguishing between literal and implied meanings and capitalizing on discourse markers to processes relationships. These require the application of sophisticated top-down processing skills. Implied meaning usually has to be derived from processing pragmatic information. Many discourse markers in English signal relationships among ideas as expressed through phrases, clauses and sentences. A good understanding of such markers can greatly increase learner’s reading proficiency. In short, reading comprehension can be very essential when it can lead the students to discuss and question about what a particular text means and to explore the text for greater understanding. In this study, the researcher wants to find out the effectiveness of graphic organizers strategy and GIST strategy to enhance reading comprehension of students with good and poor reading habits. Habit is behaviour that has been repeatedly done until it has become more less automatic, enacted without purposeful thinking, largely without any sense of awareness (Nilsen et al, 2012, p. 2).In habit people’s actions are repeated without concerning why this self concept must happen.Wood and Neal (2007, p. 843) consider habit an integrated association between stimulus and response and that association sets up with goals during learning and performance. In other words habit means the process of behaviour that goes unconsious and become automatic and we can shape the habit through the learning and performances. Behaviorists explain habit as routines of behaviour which are repeated regularly and tend to occursubsconciously. As a subsconciousself concept, reading habits can assist students to Abdul Ayiz & Warsono / English Education Journal, 8 (1) (2018) 10 - 17 13 achieve academic purpose to a great extent (Bashir and Matto, 2007, p. 2). Based on the previous definitions, habit is considered repeated actions and involves a process of unconcious pattern. It reflects person’s personality, good or bad, and it goes constantly and regularly. Reading can help learners gain meaningful knowledge and good academic performances in school. Reading habit has some purposes which are classified into four groups (Ochanya, 2010, p. 231). Reading habit can be particularly a hobby. A hobby is an activity that creates joy and satisfaction when we do it. The purpose of reading habit as a hobby make a reader knowledgable in so many areas, such as in educational, politic, religious and economic stuffs. Unlike other hobbies, reading habit is the most recommended hobby to shape readers personality skill. Reading as hobby is exciting for it helps the readers improve their ability to absorb and to comprehend written material and help pursue a better job in future. Reading habit can also be in the form of recreational which makes the reader acquire more knowledge in the classroom. Reading for relaxation is aimed to cool the reader’s brain and to avoid mental fatigue. The example of recreational reading for relaxation are reading newspaper, and magazine. Furthermore, reading habit has a purpose for concentration. Concentration means the readers acknowledge their reading process to understand the meaning of a passage. Reading for concentration is recommended for use at school by stakeholders. This reading habit purpose results positively for students’ achievement at school. Finally, reading habit is aimed for deviational. This reading habit has negative norm in which the reader sometimes pretends to read and deviates from the actual reading. It should be avoided by the students. If students have this reading habit attitude, they may loss of interest in the knowledge acquisition. GO (graphic organizer) is visual representation of information in the text (Jiang & Grabe, 2007). Graphic organizers also depict a variety of relationships and structures in a single display (Chmielewski & Dansereau, 1998). Katayama, et.al (1997) in Manoli and Papadopolou (2012, p. 348) also consider GOs to be spatial displays of text information which can be given to students as study aids to accompany texts and communicate both vertical, hierarchical concept relations and horizontal, coordinate concept relations. Furthermore, Alvermannregards GOs as “a type of advance organizers that activates a reader’s priorknowledge and depicts the organizational pattern of a reading selection by schematicallyrepresenting key vocabulary terms” (1981b, p. 4). Thus, among the various reading strategies, graphic organizer strategy is considered to approach reading differently from the traiditional, linear text presentation (Chang, Sung, & Chen, 2002). In Graphic Organizers the English teacher gives the students the images of how a sentence is constructed and connected to others which latercreates the cohesion of the text. Students become readers who see graphic organizer like seeinga map which contains any information from the text. By seeing the map full of information from the text, students can directly comprehend the text patterns much more easily. They can directly locate the details of information presented in the form of graphic. The graphic organizer is shown through boxes and arrows set up in such a way to present the connection from one word to another, one sentence to the next and from a paragraph to another which are interrelated. Students can be asked to fill in the boxes as individuals or in groups to decide what the key terms mean. The procedure of graphic organizers can be seen as follows according to Bouchard (2005, p. 81): (1) Divide the class into groups and give each group one article or selection that demonstrate the text structure being discussed; (2) Each group is responsible for finding patterns and signal words – the words which usually exist in a particular text like however, in contrast, or the words which usually exist in narrative like once upon a time– and explaining relationships Abdul Ayiz & Warsono / English Education Journal, 8 (1) (2018) 10 - 17 14 between the concepts. Each group should then share its results with the class; (3) Once all the structures are presented, give each group an article or selection that represents a different structure. Groups then share their analyses with the class. GIST is a teaching strategy used to teach expository and narrative texts. It provides students with a way to summarize information by discarding unimportant information and focusing on the key words or ideas of the passage (Hana, Warsono, &Faridi, 2015, p.1). It helps students seize better overall understanding of the reading material which has just been given to them. The procedures of using GIST strategy can be seen as follows. (1) Select a short passage; (2) Ask students to read the paragraph and have them summarize individually around 20 words summary in their own words. If one text has four paragraphs, then cut the paragraphs into four parts and discuss the gist of each paragraph; (3) Once students have finished, have them generate a class summary on the board in 20-ish words. Their individual summaries will aid them in this process; (4) Reveal the next paragraph of the text and have students generate a summary of 20 words whichinclude the first two paragraph; (5) Continue the previous step, paragraph by paragraph, until students have produced a GIST statement (20-word summary) for entire reading. The teaching procedures above will give students opportunities to delete unimportant information, select main ideas, and generalize in their own words. Furthermore, it is abeneficial strategy to teach reading texts which are considered difficult since students are trained to focus only on important information in order to enable them to comprehend the overall passage effectively. GIST strategy focuses on summarizing. Mikulecky (2003, p. 141) defines summarizing as the process of retelling the significant parts of a text in a much shorter form. Summarizing is also an important skill when studying. Mikulecky (2003, p. 141) explains that a good summary particularlycovers the main ideas and the major supporting points of what we have read. It does not include minor details or repeated details and our own ideas or opinion. It is much shorter than the original. In this research, students are requiredtosummarize short passages based on GIST strategy. There are three steps in summarizing a short passage as mentioned by Mikulecky (2003, p. 147). First, students are asked to read the passage all the way through. Second, students should go back to the beginning and check to see if each paragraph contains a topic sentence. Third, students are required to put the sentences from the paragraphs together to form a one-paragraph summary. The summary paragraph should express the main idea of the whole passage. Regarding the benefits of using graphic organizers and GIST strategies and the importance of reading habit mentioned previously, the researcher wants to investigate the effectiveness of both strategies to enhance reading comprehension of students with good and poor reading habits. The result of this study may help English teachers utilize innovative strategies in teaching reading comprehension. Reading classes are hoped to be more interesting so that students can join the learning excitedly. Based on the background of the study and reasons for choosing the topic, the researcher defines the research questions as follows: (1) How effective is graphic organizer strategy on students with good reading habit in reading comprehension? (2) How effective is graphic organizer strategy on students with poor reading habit in reading comprehension? (3) How effective is GIST strategy on students with good reading habit in reading comprehension? (4) How effective is GIST strategyon students with poor reading habit in reading comprehension? (5) How significant is the difference between the use of graphic organizers and GIST strategies for students with good and poor reading habit in reading comprehension? (6) How significant is the difference between the good and poor reading habits in reading comprehension taught by using graphic organizers and GIST strategies Abdul Ayiz & Warsono / English Education Journal, 8 (1) (2018) 10 - 17 15 for students? (7) How significant is the interaction among reading comprehension, strategies, and reading habits in reading comprehension? METHODS Experimental design was used in this study. According to Nunan (1992, p. 24), experiment is conducted to explore the strength of relationship between variables. There were basically three variables in this study. They were independent variable, dependent variable and moderator variable. The independent variables were graphic organizer and GIST strategies while the dependent variable was student’s reading comprehension and reading habit functions as the moderator variable. In addition, Gay (2011, p. 250) states that experimental design is the only types of research which can test hypotheses to explain cause-effect relations. In this experimental study, this research used factorial design for there were two independent variables. Factorial design refers to a design that has more than one variable (or grouping variable), termed as a factor (Gay, 2011, p. 272).The research uses 2 x 2 (two by two) factorial design which means having two factors and each factor has two levels. The population of this study was the twelfth gradersof MA SholahuddinDemak in the academic year 2016/2017. Two classes were chosen as the samples. They were XII IPS 1 and XII IPS 2. Graphic organizer strategy was used to teach XII IPS 1 as the first experimental group while GIST strategy was used to teach XII IPS 2 as the second experimental group. Tests were used in this study as the instruments. Tryout, pre test, and post test were conducted to answer the research questions. T- Test was used to answer question one to question four while ANOVA was used to answer question five to question seven. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION To answer the first until the fourth researchproblems, the reseacher used T-test to see thesignificance difference between pre test and posttest. The T-tests show that the result of the mean score for reading comprehension of students with good reading habit taught by using graphic organizers in pre test was 63.58 and 75.08 for the post test. T-count shows -3.787, and df 11. It means that t0.05;17 = 1.796. Since T count = 3.787> t0.05;11 = 1.796, so the first null hypothesis of this research is rejected, meaning that there is significant difference in reading comprehension of students with good reading habits in pre test and post tests. In other words, graphic organizer strategy is effective to enhance reading comprehension of students with good reading habit. In the seqond question, the mean score for students with poor reading habits who learned reading comprehension by using graphic organizer strategy in pre test was 51.94 and 71.50 for the post test. T-count shows -11.814, and df 17. It means that t0.05;17= 1.740. Since T count = 11.814> t0.05;11 = 1.740, so the second null hypothesis of this research is rejected, meaning that there is significant difference in reading comprehension of students with poor reading habits in pre test and post tests. In other words, graphic organizer strategy is effective to enhance reading comprehension of students with poor reading habit. In the third question, the mean score for students with good reading habits who learned reading comprehension by using GIST strategy shows 69.36 in pre test and 76.07 in post test. T count shows 4.524 with df 13. It means that t0.05;13 = 1.771. Since T count = 4.524> t0.05;11 = 1.771, so the third null hypothesis of this research is rejected, meaning that there is significant difference in reading comprehension of students with good reading habits in pre test and post tests. It means GIST strategy is effective to enhance reading comprehension of students with good reading habit. In the fourth question, the mean score for students with poor reading habits who learned reading comprehension by using GIST in pre test was 51.62 and the mean score in post test was 75.62.T count shows 9.600 with df 15. It means that t0.05;15 = 1.753. Since T count = Abdul Ayiz & Warsono / English Education Journal, 8 (1) (2018) 10 - 17 16 9.600> t0.05;15 = 1.753, so the fourth null hypothesis of this research is rejected, meaning that there is significant difference in reading comprehension of students with poor reading habits in pre test and post tests. It means that GIST strategy is effective to enhance reading comprehension of students with poor reading habit. In the fifth question, the reseacher used ANOVA. From the data shows that Sig of teaching strategies was equal to 0.112 and it is more than 0.05 (Sig. >α = 0.05). It means that the teaching strategies did not influence students’ reading comprehension. In other words, there is no significant difference between the use of Graphic Organizers and GIST strategies to enhance students’ reading comprehension with good and poor reading habits. In the sixth question, ANOVA was also used to analyze the significance difference of reading habits in using graphic organizer and GIST strategies to enahnce reading comprehension. The Sig of reading habit shows 0.209 209 which is higher than 0.05. It means that the reading habits did not influence students’ reading comprehension. Similarly, we can state that there is no significant difference between students with good and poor reading habits in their reading comprehension treated by using GOs and GIST strategies. In the seventh question, ANOVA was used to analyze interaction among GOs, and GIST strategies, reading comprehension, and reading habits. The Sig of Strategies*Reading Habits is equal to 0.327 and α = 0.05, so,Sig. > 0.05. It means there is no interaction among GOs, GIST strategies, reading comprehension and reading habits. CONCLUSION The conclusion of this study is graphic organizers and GIST strategies are effective to enhance reading comprehension of students with good and poor reading habit. Furthermore, there is no significant difference of the use of graphic organizer and GIST strategies to enhance reading comprhension of students with good and poor reading habit. In addition, there is no significant difference of reading habits in using graphic organizers and GIST strategies to improve reading comprehension. At last, there is no interaction among GOs, GIST strategies, reading comprehension and reading habits. SUGGESTION This study showed that the use of Graphic organizers and GIST strategies are effective to teach reading comprehension to enhance students’ reading comprehension whose both good and poor reading habits. For that reason, the researcher proposes some suggestions for further study as follows. Students at other levels of language proficiency can be respondents for another similar experimental research and the chosen research of this study was for twelfthgraders. Both teaching strategies could be used in other settings, for example in English courses or universities. )ther forms of Graphic Organizers and GIST strategies could be used to teach reading comprehension. Graphic Organizers and GIST strategies were used to teach reading comprehension. In another research, a researcher might use both strategies to focus on other language components, such as writing or others. It can be suggested that the moderator variable of the study could be changed. In another research, other moderating variables can be modified to investigate the effectiveness of Graphic Organizers and GIST in teaching reading comprehension in order to enhance students’ reading comprehension REFERENCES Alvermann, D. E. (1981).The compensatory effect of graphic organizers on text structure. 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