48 INFLUENCE OF COLLABORATIVE STRATEGIC READING (CSR) IN TEACHING READING COMPREHENSION Sopian Saori (assauris@rocketmail.com) Academy of Computer and Academy of Secretary and Management AMIKOM ASM Mataram ABSTRACT This study is aimed to find out whether there is a significant difference in reading achievement between the students who are taught by using CSR and that of the students who are taught by using another technique. This study used quasi experimental design. This research was conducted from January 13 to February 17, 2014. The participants of this study were the second year students of State Islamic Junior High School of Yogyakarta II. There were two intact classes taken as the subject of this study. Each class consisted of 32 students performing as experimental group and 32 students as a control group. The pretest and posttest were used as the instrument to collect the data. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. The research findings showed that after students were taught by using collaborative strategic reading, the students‟ mean score of the experimental group was higher (68.12) than that of the mean score of the control group (60.75) with mean difference 7.22. The F value (12.74) was higher than the F table (4.00) with 5 % level in the degree of freedom was 60 and the p value (.001) was lower than (.05). Key Words: CSR, Reading Comprehension, Teaching Reading mailto:assauris@rocketmail.com 49 INTRODUCTION English is an international language that is used around the world as a means of communication. It has become a Lingua Franca (Harmer, 2002:1). It means that it is used between two speakers whose native languages are different and where one or both are using it as a second or foreign language. There are four skills of English to be taught i.e. reading, writing, listening and speaking. In Indonesia, those four skills are taught in most schools. Reading is one of the skills that should be mastered by the students due to its benefit for their future. There are four skills of language to be taught i.e. reading, writing, listening and speaking. In Indonesia, those four skills are taught in most schools. Reading is one of the skills that should be mastered by the students due to its benefit for their future. According to Maxom (2009: 139) reading is one of the key skills in language learning. It reinforces the skills that the students acquire in speaking, listening and writing. It is also a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols in order to construct or derive meaning. Snow (2002: 11) asserts that reading is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information and ideas. It is a complex interaction between the text and the reader which is shaped by the reader‟s prior knowledge, experiences, attitude, and language community which is culturally and socially situated. The reading process requires continuous practice, development, and refinement. Among the four skills in English, reading assists people to not only get access to more language input but obtain more knowledge concerning the world as well. It is the prominent method for learning new information and has the capacity of opening up new ways of perceiving the world and transforming the world (Grabe and Stoller, 2001; in Hsu, 2010: 11). For EFL learners, reading is an essential method for independent obtaining information from other countries. Even though majority of people learn to speak before they learn to read or write, most people have more needs and chances to read than to speak in learning second and foreign language (Goodman, 1986; in Hsu, 2010: 11). In Indonesia, English is taught as a foreign language. It is also taught in State Islamic Junior High School of Yogyakarta II. It is taught twice a week for the second year students. They learn four English skills namely speaking, listening, writing and reading. English teacher has some methods of English teaching especially in teaching reading i.e. scaffolding, direct instruction and lecturing. The teacher delivers the instructional materials by using some activities such as brain storming, pre- reading, while reading and post- reading. In addition, the teacher also uses some activities like small group discussion, role play and pair discussion to develop the students‟ ability and at the end of the lesson the teacher gives feedback to the students. There are some problems found in teaching reading. The first is text difficulty. Middle and high school students are expected to read texts that have heavy concept loads and much technical vocabulary about topics that are new to the students. They not only must read these difficult texts with comprehension for initial understanding, but must also be able to think about meaning in such a way as to make inferences, draw conclusions, and acquire new learning 50 (Lenski and Lewis, 2008: 42 – 43). The second is motivation to read. Lack of motivation to read is one of the most frequent contributors to the students‟ achievement. Motivation to read is a complex construct that influences readers‟ choices of reading material, their willingness to engage in reading, and thus their ultimate competence in reading, especially related to academic reading tasks. Motivation is often linked to the students‟ self-efficacy, or their belief in their own ability. Students with little motivation to read are often disengaged from learning and avoid reading. Because these students do not spend time reading, their progress tends to be slower than that of students who do read (Bandura, 1986; Beers, 2003; and Stanovich, 1986 in Lenski and Lewis, 2008: 43). Woolley (2011: 211) points out that ineffective instruction are one of the issues in teaching reading. Many teachers have demonstrated the tendency to apply a whole class approach to instruction and seldom directly teach appropriate and personalized reading comprehension strategies to individual students with learning difficulties. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE Collaborative Strategic Reading With collaborative strategic reading (CSR), students learn to apply comprehension strategies that aid their understanding of expository text and others (Vaughn and Klingner, 1999: 285). The development of CSR was affected significantly by the approaches of reciprocal teaching and transactional strategies instruction. Initially, the teacher presents the strategies to the all class using modeling, role playing, and teacher think-aloud. After students have developed proficiency in using the strategies, the teacher then assigns the students to heterogeneous cooperative learning groups (Johnson & Johnson, 1989; Kagan, 1991 in Klingner et al., 2007: 139). Each student performs a defined role while collaboratively implementing the strategies. Thus, with CSR, all students are actively involved, and everyone has the opportunity to contribute as group members learn from and understand the text (Klingner et al., 2007: 139). Klingner and Vaughn (1998: 33) state that the goals of CSR are to improve reading comprehension and increase conceptual learning in ways that maximize students‟ participation. CSR has been proven to be a valuable approach for students at varying achievement levels. Here are the strategies of CSR proposed by Swanson et al. (2011: 2). 1. Preview: The purposes of previewing are to help students identify what the text is about, tap into their prior knowledge about the topic, and generate interest in the topic. The teacher helps the students with previewing by reminding them to use all of the visual clues in the text, such as pictures, charts, or graphs, and to look at the headings and subheadings used throughout the passage. 2. Click and clunk: In this phase, students use the process of click and clunk to monitor their comprehension of the text. When students understand the information, it “clicks”; when it does not make sense, it “clunks.” Students work together to identify clunks in the text and use fix-up strategies to help them “declunk” the word or concept. The clunk expert facilitates this process, using clunk cards. A different strategy for figuring 51 out a clunk word, concept, or idea is printed on each card (Klingner and Vaughn, 1998: 34): a. Reread the sentence without the word. Think about what would make sense. b. Reread the sentence with the clunk and the sentences before or after the clunk, looking for clues. c. Look for a prefix or suffix in the word. d. Break the word apart and look for smaller words you know. Students record their clunks in their learning logs to share with their teacher and peers. 3. Get the gist: It means that students are able to state the main idea of a paragraph or cluster of paragraphs in their own words, as succinctly as possible. In this way students learn how to synthesize information, taking a larger chunk of text and distilling it into a key concept or idea. Students are taught to identify the most important who or what in the paragraph, and then to identify the most important information they read about who or what, leaving out details. Many teachers require that students state the main point of the paragraphs in 10 words or less. 4. Wrap-up: Students learn to “wrap- up” by formulating questions and answers about what they have learned and by reviewing key ideas. The goals are to improve students‟ knowledge, understanding, and memory of what they have read. Students generate questions about important information in the passage. They learn to use question starters to begin their questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how (“the five Ws and an H”). In applying CSR, students work in groups using CSR learning log (see figure 4) and play their roles such as leader, clunk expert, timekeeper, encourager, gist expert, and announcer (Hsu, 2010: 23). Each role is specified as follows: 1) Leader: the leader leads the group in the implementation of CSR by saying what to read next and what strategy to apply next. He or she can ask the teacher for assistance if necessary. 2) Clunk expert: the clunk expert uses clunk cards to remind the group of the steps to follow when trying to figure out a difficult word or concept in the text. 3) Gist expert: the gist expert guides the group toward the development of a gist and determines that the gist contains the most important idea but no unnecessary details. 4) Announcer: the announcer calls on different group members to read or share an idea. 5) Encourager: the encourager watches the group and gives feedback, looks for behaviors to praise, encourages all group members to participate in the discussion and assist one another, evaluates how well the group has worked together and gives suggestions for improvement. 6) Timekeeper: the timekeeper lets the group members know how much time they have to write in their learning logs or complete a section of the text they are reading. The goals of CSR are to improve reading comprehension and increase conceptual learning in ways that maximize the students‟ participation in a group. CSR was developed to enhance reading comprehension skills for students with learning disabilities and students with reading difficulties (Klingner and Vaughn, 1998: 33). 52 RESEARCH METHOD This study belongs to quasi experimental design. It involves manipulation of an independent variable but differs in the subjects. It is not randomly assigned to treatment groups and does not provide full control (Ary et al, 2010: 316). Creswell (2012: 309) mentions that quasi-experiment includes assignment, but not random assignment of participants to groups. It is because the experimenter cannot artificially create groups for the experiment. Nunan (1992: 41) mentions that quasi- experiment is a quantitative research that has both pretest and posttest and experimental and control groups, but no random assignment of subjects. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION The following table was the result of pretest and posttest for both experimental and control group. Table 1. The Result of Pretest and Posttest Method N Mean Standard Deviation Pretest Posttest Pretest Posttest CSR 32 63.38 68.12 6.593 8.031 DI 32 62.88 60.75 8.331 8.647 Based on the table above, the mean score of the experimental group was 63.38 and 68.12 with the standard deviation of 6.593 and 8.031. Meanwhile in the control group, the mean score was 62.88 and 60.75 with the standard deviation of 8.331 and 8.647. Afterwards, the researcher conducted normality test to know whether the data were normally distributed or not. The computation showed that the data in pretest and posttest for both experimental and control group were normally distributed based on the calculation by using SPSS 16 computer program as follows: Table 2. Test of Normality Groups Kolmogorov Smirnov Test Pretest Posttest N Sig. N Sig. Experimental 32 0.245 32 0.616 Control 32 0.780 32 0.341 Hall (2010: 84) points out that if the p- value is higher than 0.05, it means that the data were normally distributed and p-value labeled as (Sig.). Based on the table above a Kolmogorov Smirnov test shows that the score for the experimental group (.245 and .616) was higher than 0.05 and for the control group the score (.780 and .341) was higher than 0.05. Thus, the data for both experimental and control group were approximately normally distributed. After knowing the data were normally distributed, the researcher conducted homogeneity test to know whether it is homogenous or not by applying Levene‟s test. The researcher calculated the data by using SPSS 16 computer program. Below was the result of homogeneity of pretest and 53 posttest for both experimental and control group. Table 3 Test of Homogeneity of Variances Pretest Posttest Levene Statistic df1 df2 Sig df1 df2 Sig 1 62 0.084 1 62 0.969 If the probability is over 0.05 for Levene‟s test, variances are considered to be homogeneous (Hall, 2010: 88). In line with the result above, the p-value (0.084 and .969) was higher than 0.05. It can be concluded that the data for both experimental and control group were homogenous. Hypothesis Testing In this study the hypothesis to be tested was as follows: a. Ho = There is no a significant difference in reading achievement between the students who are taught by using CSR and that of the students who are taught by using another technique. b. Ha = There is a significant difference in reading achievement between the students who are taught by using CSR and that of the students who are taught by using another technique. In this study, ANCOVA was applied by the researcher and the data were calculated by using SPSS 16 computer program. The result of calculation was as follows: Table 4. Tests of Between-Subjects Effects Dependent Variable: Scores Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Corrected Model 1197.152 a 2 598.576 9.150 .000 Intercept 1765.224 1 1765.224 26.983 .000 Pretest 326.902 1 326.902 4.997 .029 Methods 833.603 1 833.603 12.742 .001 a. R Squared = .231(Adjusted R Squared = .206) b. Computed using alpha = .05 Table 4 showed that the F value (12.74) was greater than the F table (4.00) with 5 % level in the degree of freedom was 60. And the p value (.001) was lower than (.05). It means that there is a significant difference in reading achievement between the students who are taught by using collaborative strategic reading and that of the students who are taught by using another technique. Thus, the null hypothesis was rejected. 54 Table 5. Estimates Dependent Variable: Scores Methods Mean Std. Error 95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound Upper Bound CSR 68.049 a 1.430 65.189 70.908 DI 60.826 a 1.430 57.967 63.686 Covariates appearing in the model are evaluated at the following values: Pretest = 63.13. Table 6. Pairwise Comparisons Dependent Variable: Scores Methods (J) Methods Mean Difference (I-J) Std. Error Sig. a 95% Confidence Interval for Difference a Lower Bound Upper Bound CSR DI 7.222 * 2.023 .001 3.177 11.268 Based on estimated marginal means *. The mean difference is significant at the .05 level. a. Adjustment for multiple comparisons: Least Significant Difference (equivalent to no adjustments). Table 5 depicted that the adjusted mean for the experimental group (CSR) was 68.049a and for the control group (DI) was 60.286a. The 95 % Confidence Interval for Difference would fall between lower and upper bound. The mean difference between the students who are taught by using CSR and that of the students who are taught by using another technique was 7.22 Table 7. Parameter Estimates Dependent Variable: Scores Parameter B Std. Error t Sig. 95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound Upper Bound Intercept 41.53 2 8.715 4.765 .000 24.104 58.959 Pretest .306 .137 2.235 .029 .032 .579 CSR 7.222 2.023 3.570 .001 3.177 11.268 DI 0 b . . . . . Computed using alpha = .05 This parameter is set to zero because it is redundant 55 Unfortunately, SPSS 16 did not compute the effect size. It identifies the strength of the conclusions about group differences or about the relationship among variables in quantitative study (Creswell, 2012: 203). In this study, the researcher calculated it by using the following formula (Field, 2005: 384). 𝑟Covariate = 𝑡2 𝑡2 + 𝑑𝑓 r Covariate = 2.235 2 2.235 2 + 62 rCovariate = 4.99 66.99 r Covariate = .26 CSR vs. DI = 3.572 3.572 + 62 CSR vs. DI = 12.74 74.74 CSR vs. DI =.41 Based on the calculation above, the effect size for rCovariate was .26 and it was a medium size. While the effect size for CSR vs. DI was .41 and it was a large effect. The research question of this study asked if there is a significant difference in reading achievement between the students who are taught by using collaborative strategic reading and that of the students who are taught by using another technique. This study found a significant difference. It is proved by the mean score of the experimental group (68.12) was higher than that of the control group (60.75) with mean difference 7.22. The mean score of the experimental group increased 4.74 point from 63.38 to 68.12. On the other hand, the mean score of the control group decreased -2.13 point from 62.88 to 60.75. The F value (12.74) was higher than the F table (4.00) with 5 % level in the degree of freedom was 60. And the p value (.001) was lower than (.05). The finding of this study was similar to the result from McCown (2013: 3). She examined the effects of collaborative strategic reading on informational text comprehension and meta-cognitive awareness of fifth grade students. She found that there is a statistically significant difference between the experimental group and control group with the experimental group outperforming the control group. Similarly, Swanson et al. (2011: 4) applied a quasi-experimental study of intact fourth grade classes randomly assigned to a condition (CSR or typical), found a significant difference in reading comprehension as measured by the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test favoring the CSR group. Effect sizes showed a small effect for the CSR group as a whole; however, there were larger effect sizes for the low-achieving students including those with learning disabilities. 56 CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION There is a significant difference between the scores of the students who are taught by using collaborative strategic reading and those of the students who are taught by using another technique. It is proved by the different mean of the score of the experimental group (68.12) and the mean of the score of the control group (60.75) with mean difference 7.22. The F value (12.74) was higher than the F table (4.00) with 5 % level in the degree of freedom was 60. And the p value (.001) was lower than (.05). The effect size for rCovariate was a medium effect (.26). While for CSR vs. DI was a large effect (.41). Based on the research findings and discussion, here are some suggestions which are addressed to the teachers, other researchers, and curriculum developers. 1. Teachers Collaborative strategic reading (CSR) can be used as an alternative method to teach reading comprehension. 2. Other Researchers Other researchers may use the result of this study as a reference to conduct further researches on collaborative strategic reading (CSR). 3. Curriculum Developers Curriculum developers may recommend CSR as an alternative method to teach reading comprehension. 57 REFERENCES Ary, D., Jacobs, L. C, Sorensen, C., and Razavieh, A. 2010. Introduction to Research in Education. Belmont: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Creswell, J. W. 2012. Educational Research: Planning, Conducting, and Evaluating Quantitative and Qualitative Research. (4th ed.). Lincoln: University of Nebraska. Hall, J. L., 2010. A Guide to Doing Statistics in Second Language Research Using SPSS. New York & London: Routledge (Taylor and Francis Group). Harmer, J. 2002. The Practice of English Language Teaching. Longman: Pearson Education Limited. Hsu, C. Y. 2010. 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