Journal of English Language Teaching 

http://ojs.ikipmataram.ac.id/index.php/joelt 

DOI: 10.33394/jo-elt.v5i2.2310 

Volume 5 Nomor 2, Desember 2018 

online: 2548-5865, print: 2355-0309 

pp.113-120  

 

113 

 

IMPROVING STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION THROUGH 

LISTEN–READ–DISCUSS (LRD) STRATEGY AT MA NURUSSABAH 

PRAYA TENGAH 

Terasne
1)

, Nanang Sugianto
2)

, Abdul Wahab
3)

, Maria Ulfa
4) 

FPBS IKIP Mataram 

terasne83@gmail.com
1)

, nanang_gomong@yahoo.com
2)

, wahab12@gmail.com
3)

, ulfam0170@gmail.com
4)

 

Abstract 

This research was aimed at describe whether listen-read-discuss (LRD) strategy be able to 

improve students’ reading comprehension or not. It was a classroom action research. The 

data collected uses quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data was gained from the 

result of pre-test and post-test from reading test. Meanwhile, qualitative data was gained 

from the result of observation sheets toward students and teachers activity. The instrument 

uses were test and observation sheet. The result shows that the strategy be able to improve 

the students’ reading comprehension in report text. The improvement can be seen from the 

mean score of students from pre-test, post-test one, and post-test two. The mean score of 

pre-test was 69.5 (35%), there were seven students who passed the minimum passing grade, 

in the post-test one, 72.2 (60%), twelve students passed the minimum passing grade and in 

the post-test two, 78.25 (85%),  seventeen students passed the minimum passing grade 

(KKM). 

 

Keywords: Listen-Read-Discuss, Reading Comprehension 

 

 

INTRODUCTION  

Reading is the process using to get 

idea from text, reading enables for people 

to get the information from the varieties of 

text, such as written or printed information 

from newspapers, magazines, and 

brochures. Beside that, reading as one of 

the language skill has an important role for 

facilitating students to learn a foreign 

language, in which through reading the 

students are expected to be able to find the 

information from the text, identify the 

main idea, identify the explicit or implicit 

from the text and understanding the 

purpose of the text. 

In reading, not only read the text but 

also the students’ must comprehend and 

understand the meaning of the text. 

According to Kustaryo (1988) reading 

comprehension means understand what has 

been read, and it is an active thinking 

process that depends not only on 

comprehension skill but also the students’ 

experience and prior knowledge 

comprehension involves understanding of 

vocabulary seeing the relationship among 

words and concept organizing ideas, 

recognizing ideas, recognizing author’s 

making judgments and evaluating. So, 

from this point of few, it can be said that 

the reading comprehension is very 

important for the students if the student 

does not understand what they read they 

cannot catch the meaning of the text. 

Teaching reading in senior high 

school is conducted based on the 

instructional objectives in English 

curriculum. It is states that in reading 

competence, the students are expected to 

understand the meaning of interpersonal 

and transactional written  text in the form 

of recount, narrative, procedure, 

descriptive, report, analytical exposition, 

hortatory exposition, and spoof, so that 

students are not only expected to 



  

 

114 

 

understand the text but also the student can 

access the knowledge. 

In reality, most of the students are 

interested in reading, but there are some of 

the students do not like reading, they 

cannot understand what they read and do 

not comprehend the material they read. 

Based on preliminary research done, the 

researcher found the problems; Some of 

students are not able to identify main idea, 

they cannot identify reference of word and 

conclude the topic and the last is they 

difficult to find the important point of the 

text. Those, facts passed by MA 

Nurussabah Praya Tengah. It means that 

the students were lack of reading 

comprehension, on the other hand, the 

students’ reading comprehension does not 

improve, it based on the information from 

small project of done by their English 

teachers.  

This is a reason the writer would like 

to apply a strategy in teaching reading 

called Listen – Read – Discuss (LRD) 

strategy. It is strategy could be activating 

the students, it focuses on knowledge of 

students to get good comprehension in 

reading and the researcher would like to 

choose the research to improve the 

students reading’s comprehension.  

 According to Kustaryo (1988) 

reading comprehension means understand 

what has been read, and it is an active 

thinking process that depends not only on 

comprehension skill but also the student 

experience and prior knowledge 

comprehension involves understanding of 

vocabulary seeing the relationship among 

words and concept organizing ideas, 

recognizing ideas, recognizing author’s 

making judgment and evaluating. So from 

this point of few, it can be said that the 

reading comprehension is very important 

for the student if the student does not 

understand what they read they cannot 

catch the meaning of the text. 

Brown (2003) types of reading into 

four categories: 

a. Perspective  

Perspective reading task involves 

attending to the components of larges 

stretches of discourse: letters, words, 

punctuation, and other grapheme 

symbol. 

b. Selective  

These categories in order 

ascertain one’s reading recognition 

of lexical, grammatical, or discourse 

feature of language within a very 

short stretch of language, certain 

typical task are used: picture-cued 

tasks, matching, true/false, multiple 

choice. 

c. Interactive  

Interactive reading is process of 

negotiating meaning, the reader 

brings to text a set of schemata for 

understanding it, and take is the 

product of that interaction.  

d. Extensive  

Extensive reading applies to text 

of more than a page, up to and 

including promotional articles, 

assays, technical reports, short 

stories, and books. However, the 

researcher only focuses on the 

interactive, because based on the 

level of senior high school the 

student has able to comprehend.  

 

Listen – Read – Discuss strategy is a 

strategy help the students understand a 

text. The teachers give a short lecture to 

the students. Then the students read the 

text that the teacher spoke about story. 

After reading, the students discuss the 



  

 

115 

 

information they read and the lecture of the 

teacher gave. This strategy also helps the 

students use their prior knowledge. 

Jennifer Hamilton in her article stated that 

listen, read, discuss strategy is a good 

strategy to teach reading material, the 

students to hear the lecture from the 

teacher first before even reading. In this 

step, the students use their prior’ 

knowledge about the text then the 

struggling readers into the discussion 

because the text is discussed before 

reading. In addition, Jennifer Hamilton’s 

statement is supported by Tarek Elabsy 

(2013) stated that for the struggling 

students, who have difficulty reading 

proficiency on their own, benefit from this 

activity because they activate their prior 

knowledge through listening to the 

teacher’s introduction of the topic. The 

teacher asks the students to listen to his or 

her presentation, to read, and to discuss 

what they read with each other to deepen 

their understanding. Therefore, to ensure 

student interest, the teacher should select 

topics of which students do not have prior 

knowledge. Another experts also state like 

that, their opinion is almost same with 

other, one of them is coming from 

Alvermann (1987)., he stated Listen – 

reading – Discuss strategy is a strategy 

guides students to be an active student in 

learning. Here the students can be trained 

to be better listener, reader, and speaker. 

The teacher first lectures about a selected 

portion of material. Students then read that 

portion with the purpose of comparing the 

lecture and the written content afterward 

the students and teacher discuss the lecture 

and reading. 

 

 

 

RESEARCH METHOD 

Research is the systematic process of 

attempting to find out a solution to a 

problem (when the solution is not known) 

using an acceptable methodology, Tomal, 

(2010). In this research, the researcher will 

use Classroom Action Research (CAR) 

with mix methods research that is 

Qualitative and Quantitative approach”.  

According to Kemmis and Mc Taggart, in 

Burns (2010: 9) this is a cyclic research 

which each cycle consist of four steps 

namely plan, action, observation, and 

reflection (Kemmis and Mc Taggart, in 

Burns, 2010: 9 ). The following steps of 

this research are as follow:  

 

 
Figure 1. Cyclical AR Model 

 

In each cycle, there are four steps 

such as planning, acting, observing, and 

reflecting. If the first cycle is success, the 

researcher does not need to go to the next 

cycle. And if the result of the first cycle is 

unsuccessful, the researcher must be 

continuing to the second cycle to revise 

and conduct the steps in the next cycle 

until achieving the object of the research. 

So it depends on students score based on 

the criteria of CAR success.  

 

 



  

 

116 

 

Research Subject 

In this research, the researcher 

chooses MA Nurussabah Praya Tengah as 

subject of the study especially XI grade 

students. It consists of 2 classes XI IPS (A 

class) and XI IPS (B class) and the 

researcher will take XI IPS (A class) class 

as subject of the research. It consists of 20 

students. The location of MA Nurussabah 

Praya Tengah, Central Lombok, West 

Nusa Tenggara. 

 

Instrument of the Study 

The research instrument that used in 

this study was test and observation sheet. 

The test was reading test in which the 

students wrote text in form of report text. 

The test was conducted in pre-test and 

post-test. Furthermore, the researcher used 

observation sheet to observe the teaching 

and reading process in reading class. 

 

Technique of Data Collection  

To collect the data, the research will 

give pre-test and post-test to the students. 

The clear explanation about both of those 

test are:  

1. Pre-test  

Before the researcher gives 

treatment to the students, the 

researcher will give pre-test to take 

the data. The researcher will ask for 

the student to answer the reading test 

which both of this test have 15 items. 

2. Post-test  

After the researcher teach the 

students by using LRD, the 

researcher will give post-test to the 

students. The post-test contains 15 

items of reading test. From the result 

of post-test, the researcher will take 

conclusion about this research. 

 

Technique of Data Analysis     

1. Quantitative data  

In analyst, the quantitative 

data, the researcher try to get the 

average of students’ vocabulary 

score per action in cycle. It will use 

to know students’ performance 

during learning process of reading 

comprehension. The researcher will 

take the data by using reading test. 

The researcher used objective test. It 

divides into 15 items of dyadic essay.  

2. Qualitative 

The qualitative data was the 

description on the process of listen-

read-discuss strategy to improve 

students’ reading comprehension in 

report text from the planning to 

acting and the observation and also 

to the reflecting process. 

 

FINDING AND DISCUSSION 

Research Finding 

Cycle I 

From the result of students’ reading 

score on cycle 1 after the implementation 

of Listen – Red – Discuss strategy. It was 

found that the students who got the highest 

score 85 (5%) of 20 students was the 

student initial DI, 80 (5%) there was one 

student. 77 (5%) one student. 75 (45%) 

there were nine students. 66 (10%) two 

student. 65 (15%) there were three 

students. And the lowest score of 20 

students was 60 (5%) was gotten by 

student initial LAI. The sum of the score 

was 1.444. They called pass if their score 

was equal or more than KKM 75, but they 

called fail if their score under the KKM 75. 

Meanwhile, from the twenty students, 

there were twelve students who pass the 

minimum passing grade or KKM 75. 



  

 

117 

 

Based on the calculation, the mean 

score of reading test in cycle one was 72,2. 

The highest score was 85 and the lowest 

score was 60. The result of the test shown 

that the comprehension of students was 

still needed to be improved. Because the 

students’ mean score did not achieve the 

criteria of success yet 75. Also, the 

percentage of students learning 

achievement were still less, there were 

only 12 students or 60% out of the 20 

students who achieved the score of KKM 

while the rest of them were 8 students or 

40% failed. It still needed at least 85% to 

reach the standard.  

 

Result of Observation sheet in cycle 1  

The research also observed the 

student activities jotted down the result 

into the observation sheet. The result of the 

observation were as follow:  

1) 6 students were focus on their strengths 

while they managing their weakness 

(30%) 

2) 5 student were enjoy challenging 

themselves and setting goals (25%) 

3) 9 students are still deficient in 

determining a story’s core using listen – 

read – discuss strategy (45%) 

The reflection of Classroom Action 

Research was conducted after getting the 

result of reading test. Based on the analysis 

of teaching and learning process and the 

result of students’ reading in first cycle. It 

showed that the implementation of Listen – 

Read - Discuss strategy not yet gave the 

satisfactory result in improving students’ 

reading comprehension. The students still 

got difficulty in reading, the students did 

not actively in reading process seen from 

the result of observation checklist. Beside 

it, the result of students’ reading test did 

not meet yet the criteria of success in 

which the mean score of post test 1 was 

72.2. It was lower than the criteria of 

success that was 75. So that’s way, the 

researcher and the collaborator teacher 

decided to conduct the second cycle.  

 

Cycle II 

Based on the results of student’ 

reading scores in Cycle 2, it could be 

concluded that the Listen – Read – Discuss 

strategy could improve the students’ 

reading comprehension. This can be seen 

from the criteria of success defined in this 

study. First, the students became more 

active in the teaching and learning process 

as seen on the observation checklists. 

Second, the mean score of the students’ 

reading obtained in post test 2 was 78.25. 

It was greater than the mean score in post 

test 1 was 72.2. Therefore, the action 

research was success. 

Based on the result of observation 

sheet showed the fact during 

implementation in cycle two those are; 

First, most of students paid attention to the 

teacher’s explanation because the teacher 

used both English and Indonesian language 

to ask them to learn and do the tasks within 

group to describe particular topic given by 

investigated it directly to gather some 

information. They looked very enthusiastic 

and cooperative. Second, the students more 

active involved in the groups with the new 

form of the groups and with the new topic 

discussed. Third, the students were able to 

produce acceptable paragraphs because 

there were found fewer errors than in the 

first cycle. It because of the teacher gave 

more control and guidance during the 

process of making paragraphs until the last 

process of reading. 

 

 



  

 

118 

 

Result of Observation Sheet in Cycle 2 

The researcher also observed the 

student activities and jotted down the result 

into the observation sheet. The result of the 

observation were as follows: 

1) 9 students were focused on their 

strengths while they managing their 

weakness (45%) 

2) 8 students were enjoy themselves and 

setting  goals (40%) 

3) students were not afraid to acknowledge 

when they do not something (15%) 

 

Discussion 

Based on the findings of research, 

the Listen – Red – Discuss strategy could 

enhance students’ reading ability in 

descriptive text. It was proven by students’ 

mean score and the total percentage and 

the students learning activity that increased 

in every meeting during teaching and 

learning process. In conducting the 

teaching and learning process on the first 

cycle, the researcher found that several of 

students still seemed confused and difficult 

to read or find out the ideas and less pay 

attention to teacher’s explanation. 

Moreover, the result of the students’ mean 

score on the first cycle did not meet the 

criteria of success. Therefore, the 

researcher and the collaborator decided 

together to conduct the second cycle. 

Then on cycle two, the activities in 

this cycle was done better than the cycle 

one. The students involved actively in 

learning process and paid attention to the 

teacher’s explanation. They looked 

enthusiastic to do the tasks by using this 

strategy and they followed every 

instruction from their teacher. Through 

Listen – Read – Discuss strategy involved 

students work within a group and do the 

investigation directly toward the object 

that given by the teacher. 

Based on the result of data analysis 

on cycle 1, it was found the students’ 

highest score was 85 and the lowest score 

was 60. Generally, in the cycle 1, there 

were 7 students who passed the test 

beyond the criteria of success was 75 

based on the school agreement. And the 

rest of them 13 students were failed on the 

test or still under the criteria of success. 

Meanwhile, on the cycle 2, the students’ 

highest score was 90 and the lowest score 

was 65. In this case, the students’ progress 

showed that the students who achieved the 

criteria of success increased from 12 

students (60%) on cycle 1 to 17 students 

(85%) in cycle two. From the result of 

cycle 1 and the cycle 2, it was showed that 

the Listen – Red – Discuss strategy could 

enhance students’ reading comprehension 

in descriptive text.  

In addition, related to the relevant 

study in this research, there were some 

differences and the similarities found those 

are; based on the research conducted by 

Nurtalina (2013). It has the same strategy 

to use in improving students reading 

comprehension through listen – red – 

discuss strategy. But this research had 

difference in the use of research design, 

this research was used the classroom action 

research, while Nutralina’s research used 

experimental research with experimental 

group and control group. The result of both 

these research showed that the use of 

Listen – Read – Discuss strategy 

improving the reading comprehension of 

the students. 

 

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION 

After analyzing the data, the 

researcher could conclude that the 



  

 

119 

 

implementation of Listen – Read – Discuss 

strategy was able to enhance students’ 

reading comprehension in report text at the 

tenth grade of MA Nurussabah Praya 

Tengah.  The students’ achievement in 

reading report text was better after 

implementing the Listen – Read – Discuss 

strategy. It was proven by the result of the 

mean score at cycle 1 was 72.2 (60%) and 

cycle 2 was 78.25 (85%). There was a 

progress, but the result of cycle 1 was not 

met the criteria of success yet. Then, the 

result of observation sheets on cycle one 

showed that not all of the students 

involved actively in teaching and learning 

process. 

On cycle 2 was found that there were 

17 students or 85% of 20 students who 

passed the criteria of success or KKM was 

75. In conclusion, by using Listen – Read – 

Discuss strategy was able to enhance 

students’ reading ability in report text, 

through this strategy was gave chance for 

students to work together within a group 

and do the investigation directly toward the 

object that given by the teacher. And this 

strategy was called successful based on the 

findings of the research. 

Based on the research finding, Listen 

– Read – Discuss strategy was able to 

increase students’ reading in report 

text.This strategy could be the alternative 

to overcome the students' problem in 

learning reading. So, the researcher would 

like to contribute some suggestions for 

reader, especially: 

1. For the Teacher 

Listen – Read – Discuss would be 

helpful to increase students’ reading, so the 

teacher needs to maintain using Listen – 

Read – Discuss strategy in the next new 

academic year. 

 

2. For School 

The principle of MA Nurussabah praya 

Tengah must be considered this strategy to 

be applied by other teacher with other 

subject not only English teacher because 

this strategy is dealing with observation 

directly to the object. 

 

REFERENCES 

Brown, H. D. (2003). Language 

Assessment Principles and 

Classroom Practices. California: 

Longman Group Ltd. 

__________. (2003).  Handout of 

Introduction to Readin 

Comprehension. Unpublished. IKIP. 

Mataram. 

Burns, Anne. (2010). Doing Action 

Research in English Language 

Teaching; A Guide for Practitioners. 

Routledge. New York. 

Casale and Manzo. (1985). Literacy and 

Learning: Reading in the Content 

Areas. Florida: Ted Buchhoz. 

__________.  (1985). Listen  Read  

Discuss:  A  Content  Reading  

Heuristic. Journal of Reading. 

Charles, Alderson, J.  (2000). Assessing 

Reading. Cambridge University 

Press. 

English Language Institute. (1994). 

English With Listen Read Discuss 

Book 1 Beginners. Europe. 

Kustaryo. 1988. Action research for 

teacher candidates. The United 

States of America. 

Manzo, Casale. 1985. The procedure of 

Listen Red Discuss LRD. Bantam. 

USA. 

TarekElabsy. 2013. Definition of Listen 

Red Discus edition. PCP. London. 



  

 

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Wilkinson, David 2009. Using research 

instruments a guide for researchers. 

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