IMPROVING THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION THROUGH QUESTION-ANSWER RELATIONSHIP (QAR) AT SMP N 7 PRABUMULIH

The objectives of this study were to find out whether or not there was significant improvement on the eighth grade students’ reading comprehension who were taught by using Question Answer Relationship strategy at SMP Negeri 7 Prabumulih before and after treatment, and to find out whether or not there was significant difference on the eighth grade students’ reading comprehension between those who were taught by using Question Answer Relationship strategy and those who were not at SMP Negeri 7 Prabumulih. This study used Quasi- experimental design with non equivalent pretest-posttest design. The population of this study was all of the eighth grade students of SMP Negeri 7 Prabumulih which consisted of 183 students. There were 52 students taken as sample. Each class consisted of 26 students in Experimental group (VIII3) and control group (VIII2). In collecting the data, reading test in the form of multiple choice questions was used. The test was given twice to Experimental and control groups, as a pretest and posttest. To verify the hypotheses, the data of pretest and posttest were analyzed by paired and independent sample t-test in SPSS program. The finding showed that the p-output from paired sample t-test (sig2.tailed) was 0.000 which was lower than 0.005 and t-value 5.615 was higher than t-table 2.7969 (with df=35). Then, p-output from independent sample t-test was 0.002 lower than 0.05 and t-value 5.850 was higher than t-table 1.9944 (with df=70). Therefore, it could be stated that the null hypothesis (Ho) was rejected, and the alternative hypothesis (Ha) was accepted. It means that reading comprehension by using Question Answer Relationship strategy had a significant improvement on the students’ reading comprehension. The result of this study is expected to contribute to the development of the process of English teaching and learning especially for the teaching of reading comprehension. Keywords: Reading Comprehension, Question Answer Relationship strategy.