Journal of English Language Teaching http://ojs.ikipmataram.ac.id/index.php/joelt DOI:10.33394/jo-elt.v6i2.2365 Volume 6 Nomor 2, Desember 2019 online: 2548-5865, print: 2355-0309 pp.116-120 116 THE USE OF SELF-REFLECTIVE STRATEGIES IN TEACHING READING FOR STUDENTS OF VOCATIONAL SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL AT SMKN 1 LAMONGAN Diah Astuty 1) , Abdullah Farih 2) , Akhzaroh Wahidah 3) 1) Islamic University of Lamongan 2) Islamic University of Lamongan 3) State Vocational Senior High School 1 of Lamongan diahastuty1412@gmail.com 1) , abdullahfarih@gmail.com 2) , akhzarohw@gmail.com 3) Abstract This study aims to describe the use of self-reflective strategies in teaching reading at a vocational senior high school. Self-reflective strategies used in enhancing the students of vocational senior high school to reflect their comprehension on the given reading materials. This activity was considered effective in order to practice and drill the students’ critical thinking. The strategies should be implemented repeatedly to make the students more skillfully creating their comprehension on the given reading materials by integrating the keywords extracted from the given reading materials. This study was implemented in experimental design at two classes of Institutional Finance Accounting department (Akuntansi Keuangan Lembaga/AKL) class X th . The experimental class was class X th AKL1 that it consisted of 35 students. The control class was class X th AKL2 consisted of 34 students. Class X th AKL1 was chosen as the experimental class based on the class’ mean 𝑥 of the pretest that it was 2 points lower than class X th AKL2. The (𝑥 ) of the pretest score from class X th AKL1 was 76. The 𝑥 of the post-test score from the experimental class was 86. The N-Gain score after having treatment from class X th AKL1 was 70.7 in percentage. It can be assumed that this strategy was adequately effective to apply to the students on the reading subject reflecting their reading comprehension and therefore, the students could adjust the strategies to achieve their profound reading comprehension. Keywords: Self-Reflective Strategies, Reading Comprehension, Vocational Senior High School INTRODUCTION Teaching reading is a complex activity for teachers at senior high school. Since English teachers should teach several types of reading to their students, the purpose of reading could be at vary. There are three categories of reading that the students should achieve their competence, they are: a) academic reading, (b) job related reading and (c) personal reading (Brown, 2006:186-7). Reading at vocational senior high school is quite different than reading at senior high school. It has specific purposes to educate the students with the reading materials that those reading texts would interconnect the senior vocational school students to the jobs they are going to be employed. The reading texts should be taught to the vocational senior high school students based on those characteristics; (a) its linguistic elements, (b) its topics, (c) its social functions and (d) its textual structures. Those characteristics are mostly related to the use of vocabulary within the reading content. Vocabulary plays an essential role in the reading texts. The ability in comprehending some reading texts would be affected by the ability to understanding the use of vocabulary within the texts. According to Read (2000:29-31), the ability of the students in understanding the mailto:diahastuty1412@gmail.com mailto:abdullahfarih@gmail.com 117 vocabulary in the given reading texts would be categorized into three, namely: the context of vocabulary use, vocabulary knowledge and fundamental processes, and metacognitive strategies for vocabulary use. The context of vocabulary use would require the students of vocational senior high school learning about the function of vocabulary for communication purposes. It means that the students would also be required to understand the connection between the pragmatic context of the vocabulary and its meaning. It would encourage the students of vocational senior high school learning how to use and interpret specific words that those are related with specific disciplines, for instance, some words that relate to engineering subject, those to accounting subject, etc; they would have their different uses and meanings from their general uses and meanings within more general context. Meanwhile, the vocabulary knowledge and fundamental processes would require the students of vocational senior high school bridging what they have known before about some words and what they have not known yet about some new vocabulary. Their ability in bridging what they have known on some words and what they have not known yet on some words in reading texts would affect their comprehension on the reading texts. Therefore, the students would process their new information on some words by inferring the meaning of some words within its context. In helping the students to make inferences, metacognitive strategies could be taught. As one of the kinds of strategies, self-reflective strategies involve the students to take part in their learning process. They would make a self reflection on what they have learned and what they have comprehended. Self- reflection as part of this strategy would be applied in some steps. As the purposes of self-reflective strategies (Schmidt, 2011) are to aim the critical analysis and experiences in order to achieve deeper meaning and understanding from the students about the given learning materials. The first step of the self-reflective strategies in this study is the students encouraged to find out some keywords when the students have finished skimming the reading texts. The students would be taught how to find out the keyword relating to the genre of the reading texts. On some descriptive reading texts, the keywords mostly are in the form of ‘adjective’ since those words have a function to describe something, someone or a place. The second step of the self- reflective strategies is the students encouraged to draw assumptions on the given reading text. Their assumption would be constructed by bridging the keywords that they have found and the context of the reading texts. Then, to convince whether their assumption is correct or incorrect, the students would be asked to read the texts in getting deeper comprehension. The last step is the students asked to do the exercises. While they’re completing the question items, after the class discusses the right answer, the students will be asked to make a self reflection on what they have comprehended. If the students find their answers will be incorrect, they can make self-reflection to adjust their strategies in reading comprehension. 118 RESEARCH METHOD This study used purposive sampling on the X th classes of institutional Finance Accounting department (AKL) at SMKN 1 Lamongan. There are two parallel classes of X th grade from Institutional Finance Accounting department (AKL). The class of X th AKL1 consists of 35 students and the class of X th AKL2 consists of 34 students. The experimental class was chosen based on the 𝑥 𝑡ℎ𝑒 score of the pretest. The X th AKL1 class was chosen as the experimental group because of the result of ( 𝑥 ) was two points lower than the X th AKL 2 class. The ( 𝑥 ) of pretest from the AKL1 class was 76. The( 𝑥 ) of pretest from the AKL2 class was 78. Therefore, the AKL2 class was chosen as the control group. Research Design The research design of this study was the experimental design which used a quantitative method. Both of the classes had pre-test and post-test. The design of the research could be described as follows: Table 1 Research Design Group Pretest Independent Variable Posttest Experimental Y1 X Y2 Control Y1 Y2 Sampling The technique of sampling used in this study was purposive sampling. The department of Institutional Finance Accounting was chosen since the department had a specific vocabulary list on the accounting subjects. Both classes were taken and assigned a pretest. The mean of pretest score was used to identify the experimental class and the control class from this study. Data Analysis In identifying which of the class that the class would be the experimental class and got the treatment, after the pretest that has taken and the score of Mean would be determined as follows: The result of 𝑋 from X th AKL1 class was 76 and 𝑋 from X th AKL 2 class was 78. To measure the effectiveness of the treatment that the experimental class has been had, the N-gain would be calculated using SPSS. Table 2 The Result of N-Gain from Experimental Class No. Participant Pretest Post-test N-Gain Percent 1 66 90 70.59 2 52 90 79.17 3 70 92 73.33 4 72 94 78.57 5 76 94 75.00 6 66 94 82.35 7 66 92 76.47 8 72 90 64.29 9 56 84 63.64 10 70 98 93.33 11 68 90 68.75 12 72 94 78.57 13 72 94 78.57 14 70 94 80.00 15 74 84 38.46 16 70 90 66.67 17 74 92 69.23 18 60 90 75.00 19 70 90 66.67 20 68 90 68.75 119 21 54 90 78.26 22 54 88 73.91 23 74 92 69.23 24 60 90 75.00 25 68 88 62.50 26 72 84 42.86 27 56 88 72.73 28 76 90 58.33 29 68 90 68.75 30 48 94 88.46 31 72 88 57.14 32 72 88 57.14 33 56 90 77.27 34 66 92 76.47 35 68 90 68.75 FINDING AND DISCUSSION The findings of the pretest from X th AKL1 (𝑥 ) was 76 and the pretest result from X th AKL2 (𝑥 ) was 78. It showed that the class of X th AKL1 was determined to have treatment to increase their reading comprehension. Based on the treatment that it had, the experimental class and the control class were given the post-test. The result of the post-test from the experimental class had increasing points. From table 2, it showed that only one student had N-Gain score range from 56-75%. The average N-Gain for the experimental class was 70.7%. According to Hake (1999), the categories of the N-Gain effectiveness can be described as follows: Table 3 The Description of N-Gain Category Percentage Category <40 Ineffective 40-55 Less effective 56-75 Adequate effective >76 Effective It can be concluded based on the N- Gain score in percentage that the use of Self Reflective Strategies in teaching reading at the X th class of AKL1 was successful. REFERENCES Alderson, Charles J. (2001). Assessing Reading. United Kingdom. Cambridge University Press. Ary, Donald et.al. (2010). Introduction to Research Education. Canada. Nelson Education, Ltd. Brown, H. Douglas. (2006). Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practice. USA. Longman, Ltd. Gall, Meredith D., & et.al. (2003). Educational Research (7 th edition). USA: Pearson. Landers, Mara & Reinholz, Daniel. (2015). Student’s Reflections on Mathematics Homework Feedback. Journal of Developmental Education Vol. 38. Lew, M. D. N., & Schmidt, H. G. (2011). Writing to learn: Can reflection journals be used to promote self- reflection and learning? Higher Education Research & Development, 30(4), 519-532. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07294360. 2010.512627. Mezirow, Jack. (1997). New Direction For Adults and Continuing Education. USA. Jossey Bass Publisher. Read, John. (2000). Assessing Vocabulary. United Kingdom. Cambridge University Press. Schunk, H. Dale & Zimmerman, J. Barry. (2007). Influencing Children’s Self Efficacy and Self Regulation of Reading and Writing Through Modelling. Reading and Writing Quartely Journal, 23, p.7-25. www.tandf.co.uk/journals. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2010.512627 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2010.512627 http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals 120 Thompson, I. (1987). Memory in Language Learning, In A. Wenden & J. Rubin (eds.), Learner Strategies in language learning (pp. 15-30). New Jersey. Prentice Hall.