Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, Vol. 7 No.1, Mei 2019 3 ANSWERING READING TEXTS ON ENGLISH TRYOUT TEST BASED ON THE 12 TH GRADE STUDENTS' STRATEGIES AT SMA NEGERI1 KURIPAN LOMBOK BARAT Husnul Lail Mataram University, Faculty of Teachers Training and Education English Educational Program Email:lail_rifna@yahoo.com Abstract The purpose of this study was to find out the answering reading text on English Tryout Test based on the 12th Grade students' Strategies at SMA Negeri1 Kuripan Lombok Barat in the Academic Year of 2018/2019. The population was 329 students and the sample was XII. A class that consists of 31 students were involved in this study. This study was designed as a descriptive study in analyzing the data. The data was obtained through the questionnaire. It was to find out which was the mostly strategies used by students among meta-cognitive and cognitive strategies. The result of this study showed that there were two kinds of strategy used by the students: meta-cognitive (80.31%) and cognitive (89.37%) strategies. Moreover, the most dominant meta-cognitive strategies used by students were; setting plans on how to complete the test, aware of the objective of the reading tasks, correct mistakes immediately, and checking the answers of reading tasks carefully before submitting the test. While the most dominant cognitive strategies used by the students were: guessing, scanning, and skimming. The reason why guessing, scanning, and skimming get the highest percentage and being the most dominant strategies chosen was that they were very easy and simple strategies to apply when facing such a reading text. They did not need much time to identify the text. In addition, the reason guessing also got a high percentage because it was the most effective way to use during the test by using a dictionary was not allowed. Key Words: Reading, Strategies, Meta-cognitive, Cognitive. Abstrak Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui jawaban teks bacaan tes Tryout Bahasa Inggris berdasarkan Strategi Siswa Kelas 12 di SMA Negeri 1 Kuripan Lombok Barat Tahun Ajaran 2018/2019. Populasi adalah 329 siswa dan sampel kelas XII.A yang terdiri dari 31 siswa. Penelitian ini adalah dikategorikan penelitian deskriptif. Data diperoleh melalui kuesioner. Ini dimaksudkan untuk mengetahui strategi-strategi yang digunakan oleh siswa di antara strategi meta-kognitif dan kognitif. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa ada dua jenis strategi yang digunakan oleh siswa: strategi meta-kognitif (80,31%) dan kognitif (89,37%). Selain itu, strategi meta-kognitif yang dominan adalah; pengaturan rencana tentang menyelesaikan tes, menyadari tujuan dari tugas membaca, memperbaiki kesalahan dengan segera, dan memeriksa jawaban dari tugas membaca dengan seksama sebelum mengirimkan tes. Sedangkan strategi kognitif yang paling dominan adalah: menebak, memindai, dan membaca cepat. Alasan mengapa menebak, memindai, dan memotivasi untuk mendapatkan persentase tertinggi dan menjadi strategi paling dominan yang dipilih adalah karena mereka sangat mudah dan strategi sederhana untuk diterapkan ketika menghadapi teks bacaan semacam itu. Mereka tidak perlu banyak waktu untuk mengidentifikasi teks. Selain itu, alasan menebak (guessing) juga mendapat persentase yang tinggi, karena cara ini adalah cara paling efektif untuk digunakan selama tes dengan menggunakan kamus tidak diperbolehkan. Kata Kunci: Membaca, Strategi, Meta-kognitif, Kognitif Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, Vol. 7 No.1, Mei 2019 4 INTRODUCTION Language is one of the most important communication tools to connect one to another. Knowing a language is important because through language people are able to acquire the information that they required and shared information as well. As stated by Watkins (2005:77) “one primary use of language is to establish and maintain the social relationship”... “Language is also used to share or pass on information” therefore knowing language is very important in order to build a relationship among people to share and pass information as well. One of the most popular languages in the world is English. Almost all people in the world used English to communicate to one and another, whether spoken or written. English is an important language which used in many areas such as in internet, books, and products. Therefore, English is very important to be learnt. In Indonesia, English was taught from elementary level to university, but the fact that in Indonesia English was taught as a foreign language which meant that the area of the language was limited. As stated by Setiyadi (2006:22) “In Indonesia, English is learnt only at schools and people do not speak the language in the society. English is really a foreign language for language learners in Indonesia”. It was inversely compared with the country which taught English as the second language such as Malaysia. “In Malaysia, English was gained in the society where the people spoke the language; in Malaysia, English was spoken as a second language”. It is one of the subjects to be examined in the national examinations at junior and senior high schools together with Bahasa Indonesia, mathematics and natural science, with social science added for senior high school (Indonesian Government Regulation No. 19/2005). Before the students facing the National Examination, they will be given a try-out test to preparing their readiness and also give them some views about how the questions will be. In English Tryout test for senior high school, reading text is the most presented. Silberstein (1994: 12) states that "reading is a complex information processing skill in which the readers interact with the text in order to create or recreate meaningful discourse". It means that students interacted with the text by reading the text in order to know the meaning of the text and to get information on the text. Since the reading is very complex and in tryout students are demanded to finish all of the questions in a certain amount of time, it is obvious that the students need a better and faster way to do the test, especially reading test which needs more time. Therefore, this study focused its concern on the strategies that students applied during the tryout test. As we know, there are some language learning strategies in reading activities that students can use to help them understand the text and improve their reading skill. The language learning strategy is special thoughts/behaviors that individuals use to help them comprehend, learn or retain new information (O'Malley and Chamot, 1990). However, in several cases, the writer always found that smart students often got a low score, it probably caused by the mental process which influences their strategies in answering the test. By using an appropriate strategy in reading activities, students easier to understand the text, easier to answer the questions related to the text, easier to remember what is in the text and also can improve their reading skill. Thus, students can avoid some problems with reading activities. Such as missing information, a difficult word, find a topic sentence, the main idea of the text, etc. Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, Vol. 7 No.1, Mei 2019 2 This study was conducted in SMA Negeri 1 Kuripan Lombok Barat in the Academic Year of 2018/2019. This study focused on answering reading texts on English Tryout test based on the students' strategies. During Tryout test, students were expected to answer the questions correctly while the time given is limited. The writer was interested in finding out what kinds of strategies that they used in answering reading texts on English Tryout test. The result of this study, the writer hopes students are able to aware of the strategies that they use. Thus, they can choose, apply, combine, and develop some best particular strategies in reading activity especially in facing National Examination. METHOD OF STUDY This study was designed as a descriptive study. The subjects of this study were XII. A class consisting of 31 students, because they got a good score on English Tryout test. They might use certain strategies in answering English Tryout test so that they could answer the test correctly. According to the English major teacher, this class has a good range in general, they were considered becoming reliable responses for the study. The questionnaire prepared for the students in order to find out their strategies in answering reading texts on English tryout test. The questionnaire used in this study was close- ended extracted from Ling (2011) based on O’Malley and Chamot (1990) learning strategies. In order to make the students understand the questionnaire clearly, the questionnaire was written in the Indonesian language. The questionnaire designed for students consists of two parts. Part A concerned personal details including the student name and class. Part B concerned with the students' self- assessment of using strategies, which contained 20 statements related to meta- cognitive and cognitive reading strategies. In the questionnaire, the Guttman scale was used, so two choices (yes and no) were offered for each statement. Then the data were taken from the result of the students' questionnaire. The data gathered were analyzed by identifying the students' positive answer from the questionnaire and calculating the percentage of the data to find out the result of the most dominant strategies students used. In this step, the writer found the result of student’s questionnaire with percentage data. It was analyzed by using the formula below: Number of Positive Answers Percentage = X 100 Total Number of Correspondents 1. Explaining the result of the questionnaire The writer clarified the result of the questionnaire. Then, the writer gave a more detail explanation about the result of the percentage to make sure the data clearly toward questionnaire. 2. Drawing a conclusion The writer answered all of the questions in this particular writing and gave some suggestion as good guidance for the next study. RESEARCH FINDINGS The questionnaire for the students included 20 items. Among them, 10 items could be classified as meta-cognitive reading strategies and the other 10 items were cognitive reading strategies. The 10 items of meta-cognitive strategies were further divided into six subcategories: advanced organization, selective attention, directed attention, self- management, monitoring, and self- evaluation. Similarly, the 10 items of cognitive strategies were also grouped into 10 subcategories, namely, skimming, scanning, prediction, analyzing, summarizing, elaboration, repetition, guessing, translation, and inferring. By using questionnaire, the writer got the students' responses about their strategies in answering reading texts on English Tryout test at the 12 th grade Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, Vol. 7 No.1, Mei 2019 3 students of SMAN 1Kuripanombok Barat in the academic year of 2018/2019, especially XI. A class. It was found that the average percentage of meta-cognitive strategies was 80.31%. There were four strategies of meta-cognitive strategies that had the highest point from students with 87.5% and there were 10 cognitive strategies offers by the writer in the questionnaire. From 10 strategies, most of them got more than 80% in which only statement number 16 which got less than eighty percent. It also shows that the average percentage of cognitive strategies is 89.37%. Meta-cognitive Strategies The four categories of meta- cognitive that had the highest percentage from students with 87.5% namely; setting plans on how to complete the test, aware of the objective of the reading tasks, correct mistakes immediately, and checking the answers of reading tasks carefully before submitting the test. The second highest chosen strategies with a percentage of 84.37% are; know what to read closely and what to ignore and evaluating performance and progress while completing the test. The third highest chosen strategy with a percentage of 81.25% is: paying attention and memorizing the questions before reading the text. The next strategy students chose was evaluating the effectiveness of strategies used. This strategy got 71.87%. The reason was it got less than eighty percent is because most students still view this strategy as an important one while the rest think it is dependable. Doing an evaluation of the strategy actually can help students to know whether the strategy they used is suitable and effective. Finally, there were two strategies that got the lowest percentage. Those tried to find out the weakness in reading activity and think how to improve their reading efficiency with 68.57% and distinguish the easy and difficult questions and spend much more time on difficult reading tasks with 62.5%. The first lowest strategies chosen was to try to find out a weakness in reading activity and think about how to improve their reading efficiency. This strategy seems important to do. Finding the weaknesses, for instance, may function as a tool to evaluate which part of reading activities may lack. Besides, thinking of the way to improve that weaknesses have been linked to finding weaknesses. Thus, after finding what lacks in reading, at the time the students can find the solution for that problem. However, this strategy viewed as less important ones to do during the test. The four highest strategies previously mentioned are viewed as more important strategies to do at that time. Find out the weakness in reading activity, and think how to improve their reading efficiency may very suitable to do after doing the test but to do it when the test running is not a good choice because of the limited time we had in the test. Moreover, the second lowest chosen strategy was distinguishing the easy and difficult questions then spend much more time on difficult reading tasks. Distinguish the easy and difficult questions sometimes need time that is why it seems not effective. The students sometimes prefer to do questions regularly. That is why this strategy does not get much intention from the students. However, in some cases, spend much more time on difficult reading tasks seems helpful to think about the right answer. Cognitive Strategies There were 3 strategies of cognitive that had the highest percentage from students with 100% namely; guessing, scanning, and skimming. Moreover, there were three strategies which got the second highest percentage with 87.5%, those were summarizing, grammar analysis, and elaboration. The third highest chosen from the students in which got 84.37% were predicting, translating, and repetition. Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, Vol. 7 No.1, Mei 2019 4 .There was one strategy which got the lowest percentage with 78.12% is an inference or using a transitional word. In addition, the result of this study was similar to the previous studies particularly with Ling’s (2011), which claimed that cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies were strategies that frequently used by the students. As we can see that in this study, the average cognitive was 89.37%, while meta-cognitive was 80.31%. This result shows that the frequent use of both strategies is almost the same as the average percentage of 80%. However, this study has a different result with Phakiti’s study (2003) in which according to the data in this study, the cognitive strategy frequently used than meta- cognitive while Phakti’s claimed the opposite. In summary, there were two kinds of reading strategies used by students: meta- cognitive and cognitive strategies. Before further discussing the result it is better to know more about what meta-cognitive and cognitive mean since both of them are closely related and sometimes hard to be distinguished. In general, based on the previous discussion on chapter two, meta- cognitive is a learning strategy that involves thinking about or knowledge of learning process, planning for learning, monitoring learning while it is taking place or self-evaluation learning after the task is completed (O'Malley and Chamot, 1990). While cognitive can be simply defined as a mental process in which it covers the activity of memory, attention ability, producing and understanding language, a reason for learning, problem- solving, and decision-making. It means that cognitive included activities of processing information and applying knowledge. Thus, we can draw a conclusion that meta-cognitive refers to monitoring language improvement, while cognitive refers to a knowledge improvement. CONCLUSION From the previous data and discussion, it is concluded that: There were two kinds of strategies used by the students: Meta-cognitive and Cognitive strategies. The result of the study also showed that the average percentage of meta-cognitive was 80.31%, while cognitive was 89.37%. The most dominant meta-cognitive strategies used by the students in answering reading texts on English Tryout test represented 87.5% of total responses were: Setting plans on how to complete the test; Aware of the objective of the reading tasks; Correct mistakes immediately; and Checking the answers to reading tasks carefully before submitting the test. While on the side of cognitive strategies, the most strategies used by the students represented 100% of total responses were: Guessing, Skimming, and Scanning. In terms of the reason why guessing, skimming and scanning became the most strategies that students used because those strategies were very easy and simple strategies to apply in reading text. Scanning and skimming did not need a very long time to identify the text. These types of reading only demanded the reader to read the gist of the text to find the general ideas. In addition, the reason guessing also got a high percentage is because it was the most effective way to use when during the test using a dictionary was not allowed. SUGGESTIONS Observing the conclusion above, that writer provided some suggestion related to reading strategies for teacher and students. The suggestions are; For Teachers: Teachers should help students to develop their reading strategy, teachers should help students to find out which strategy is the most suitable for them; Teachers should make more variation in their teaching method to Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, Vol. 7 No.1, Mei 2019 5 accommodate students who have a different strategy. For Ttudents; Students should use cognitive strategies (guessing, skimming, scanning) and metacognitive strategies (setting plans on how to complete the test, aware of the objective reading tasks, a correct mistake immediately, checking the answers before submitting the test). Students should develop their reading proficiency For Researchers; For other writers, it may help the other writers to continue this study or finding other topics that are similar and use this study as a useful reference. BIBLIOGRAPHY Government Regulation No. 19, the Year 2005 concerning National Education Standard (PeraturanPemerintahNomor 19 Tahun 2005 O’Malley, J. Michael &Chamot, Anna.V. 1990. Learning Strategy in Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Oxford, R.L. 1990. Language Learning Strategies: What Every Teacher Should Know. New York: Newbery House Publishers. Phakiti, A. (2003). Construct Validation of Bachman and Palmer's Strategic Competence Model Over Time in EFL Reading Tests. Language Testing, 237-272. Setiyadi, Bambang. 2006. Teaching English as A Foreign Language. Yogyakarta GrahaIlmu Sun, Ling. 2011. Investigating Chinese English Majors’ Use of Reading Strategies: A Study on the Relationship between Reading Strategies and Reading Achievements. Sweden. Kristianstad University. Watkins, Peter. 2005. Learning to Teaching English. England: Delta Publishing. INTRODUCTION