THE EFFECT OF SNOWBALL THROWING ON STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION ABILITY

(Mahasiswa Jurusan Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris FKIP Unisma)

Abstract: This research study aims at investigating whether there is significant difference on the students’ reading comprehension ability before and after being taught using snowball throwing. The research design of this study was experimental research. The researcher applied quasi-experimental, non randomized pre test and post test design, the variables examined in this research were independent variable teaching English using snowball throwing and dependent variable students’ reading comprehension. In the end of the research, the researcher concluded that the effect of snowball throwing on students’ reading comprehension ability by comparing the test result between the pre-test and post test in two groups. The findings of the research showed that there was not a significant difference on students’ reading comprehension achievement that were given treatment by using snowball throwing and those were not given treatment of snowball throwing. The value of observed F ratio was 1.26. the researcher then compared it to the critical F value. The critical F found in Table of F distribution with df 1/31 at level of significane 0.01 was 7.52. So, it was clear that the value of observed F value was not higher than the critical F value. It mean that snowball throwing had not significant effect on the students’ reading comprehension achievement.

Key Words: Snowball throwing, Reading process, Reading comprehension Ability

INTRODUCTION

The teaching of English has become increasingly important as a foreign language in Indonesia. It is the first foreign language in Indonesia. It is a compulsory subject to be taught for three years at junior high schools and for three years in senior high school. English also has been taught in elementary school as an elective subject since the implementation of the 1994 curriculum. It seems the development of English language teaching in Indonesia touches the recent English curriculum objectives. The general standard objectives of English language teaching at senior high schools in Indonesia are determined as follows: developing communicative competence both in oral and written in order to reach the level of informational literacy, raising awareness of the nature of English as a foreign language in order to compete with other countries in global community, and developing comprehension of students about the relation between language and culture. (Musthafa, 2001:297).

The important features of school based competence are competence standards and basic competence. The competence standards in English curriculum are speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Each competence standard has several basic competences. Those basic competences are distributed into three years or three grades in senior high school. Those are the minimum competences which students should reach in each grade. To reach the basic competence in each grade, teacher formulates some teaching and learning objective in particular meetings.

The focuses of English language teaching in senior high school based on English school-based curriculum are as follows: First, discourse ability is students’ competence to understand and procedure oral and written texts in relation to four language competences (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). Second, students’ competence to comprehend and procedure various short functional and monolog texts, and essay texts such as procedure, descriptive, recount, narrative, report, news item, analytical exposition, hortatory exposition, spoof, explanation, discussion, review, and public speaking. Third, other competences are linguistic competence (grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and written rules), social culture competence (language expression based on the community context),strategic competence (problem solving in communication occurred), and discourse maker competence. (Musthafa, 2001:301).

As we know that most of learners told the students’ problem in learning reading such as they do not have enough vocabulary, are lazy to and not used to reading printed materials. Based on those problems, most of learner has difficulty in reading the text. According to Gabb (2000) in Alyousef, poses a very important question why learners face difficulties in moving into fluency stage although they have had basic decoding skills. She identifies a number of “barriers” for the reader was limited vocabulary and lack of background knowledge (schematic knowledge).

Teaching reading comprehension is very important, because it can be used to develop the ability to read not only the textbook but also other reading materials. Therefore, reading ability is very important for the students of English as foreign language. Teacher should have good method to teach learners and make the learners understand the text well. Because when the students are taught using conventional method, the teaching process only focus on the teacher and the learner not pay attention to the teacher. Learning method constitutes from theory constructivism and cooperative learning model that students trained to find many information from their idea and solve the problems with sharing and discussion by their classmates.

According to the statement above, the researcher purposes the Snowball Throwing as a method of teaching reading. It’s known that reading is one of important skills in the school; the examinations of English also use text to measure of student understanding about the text. The students should have good comprehension in the process of reading to understand the text and order to pass the exam.

Snowball throwing is one of the cooperative learning that focused on group work using discussion in which every group asks questions to another so that the group will work cooperatively to solve the problem. In other word, each individual in groups will have been responsible for explaining what they have known based on the question that given from the other members in different groups. Based on Hardian snowball throwing is a teaching technique that can improve the student’s attention in comprhension of text. Through snowball throwing technique the students invite to lokk for information generally, and decide the chief to manage discussion in the group. Every group writes questions given to another group, and another group answers the question and take a conclusion from the result of group’s answer of the question that have been received by them.

METHOD

The researcher used quantitative research in the form of quasi-experiment as research design. Based on Ary (2010:265), the experiment is a scientific investigation in which the researcher manipulates one or more independent variables, controls any other relevant variables, and observes the effect of the manipulations on the dependent variable(s).

In this research, the researcher used quasi experimental design in which there were experimental and control groups. According to Wiersma, W (1991: 135) quasi-experimental research involves the use of intact groups of subjects in an experiment, rather than assigning subject at random to experiment treatment. The researcher uses the quasi-experimental research because in this study the researcher uses all of subject in group to get a treatment.

In this research, there were two groups: experimental and control groups. The researcher gave different treatments to experimental and control groups. In experimental group, the researcher gave treatment using Snowball throwing, but in control group conventional teaching was used.

The population of this research was all students of first year students of MA MIFTAHUL MA’ARIF. There are 34 students of first year students and only one class. In this research, the researcher took one class from as the sample in this research which consists of 34 students. The sample was non-randomized design. Group A was control group and group B was experimental group. Experimental group is the group that got a treatment from the researcher in the teaching process by snowbal throwing approach. Meanwhile control group is the group that taught by using conventional approach.

In this research, since the samples are first year students, The researcher was teaching about narrative text for both experimental and control groups. During the treatment for both experimental and control groups, the researcher uses the same guidance English book as the related teacher used (i.e. English in focus). The researcher also use another related sources from story princes mandalika.

After the treatment has already been given to the students, the researcher conducted the post-test. The purpose of the post-test was to know whether the treatment of using snowball throwing method in learning could be effective or not for students’ reading comprehension in MA MIFTAHUL MA’ARIF.

Post test was have the same number as the pre-test but different items. In post test, the items were about materials given, that is narrative text. The validity of post-test can be seen from the content of the test. The content of the test was relevant with the material given during experiment or treatment. So this test was measured what should be measured.

The questions of post test were taken from English book during the treatment (i.e. English in focus). Besides, the researcher was consulting the item of test to the related English teacher.

The data analysis was used to determine the effect of using snowball throwing method implemented to the experimental group to get better English reading comprehension. It could be indicated by pre-test and post-test scores. The scores from both the pre-test and the post-test collect was analysis by using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). 

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

This section focused on pre-test and post-test scores analysis of both experimental group and control group and the hypothesis testing. The result of pre-test scores of the experimental and control groups were presented in Appendix 1 and 2. After analyzing the data, the researcher found that the average scores group was different. The pre-test score of experimental group was 11.70 and control group was 10.82. The post test score of experimental was 14.29; whereas, the control group was 12.82.

Table 2: The Computation of Data Analysis of ANCOVA

Experimental group	Control group	Total
N1       = 17            = 658    = 26076      = 805    = 39683 = 31275	N2       = 17      = 610    =  22882     = 722    =31598 = 26365	Ntotal         = 34      = 1268 total    = 48958     = 1527 total    = 71281         = 57640

The data analyzed by ANCOVA. Then, the resarcher tested the hypothesis by noticing at the above calculation that listed the value as shown in Table 4.1. The value of observed F ratio was 1.26. the researcher then compared it to the critical F value. The critical F found in Table of F distribution with df 1/31 at level of significane 0.01 was 7.52. So, it was clear that the value of observed F value was not higher than the critical F value (observed F< critical F).

Based on the table above, the researcher found that there was not a significant difference on students’ reading comprehension achievement that were given treatment by using snowball throwing and those were not given treatment of snowball throwing. It meant that the alternative hypothesis was not accepted, and the null hypothesis, that there was no significant difference between the reading comprehension achievements of two groups was accepted. In brief, snowball throwing had not significant effect on the students’ reading comprehension achievement.

Table 3: Summary of ANCOVA with Pre-test as Covariate

Source of Variance	SS’	Df	MS’	F	Level of Significance
Between Group	94.92	1	94.92	1.26	0.01
Within Group	2329.32	31	75.14
Total	2424.24

In this section, the researcher discussed further about the research findings. In correlation with the research problem, the findings showed that there was no significant difference on the students’ reading comprehension achievement between students who were taught by snowball throwing and those who were taught by conventional teaching. This finding of this research was different from the finding in the previous one conducted by Sa’adatuddaroini (2011). She found that teaching reading by using snowball throwing is more effective than conventional teaching.

In this research, the researcher found that the experimental group used student-centered approach and the Control group focused on the researcher-centered approach, all the students had the same ability and the same competence but they had different enthusiasm and motivation. In the teaching process, the researcher found that the students in the experimental group were enthusiastic to study more about reading. During teaching learning process, students were asked in group. The group was consists of four to five students. Students should read the text together with their partner in a group. After the students finish reading the text, students were take individual quiz related to the text that already discussed with their partner. Students were not permitted to help one another during quizzes. Thus, every student is individually responsible for knowing the material. Students who have high score got additional point from the researcher.

And then, the procedures in the experimental groups the students felt interested, but the result of their learning using snowball throwing were same with the students who used conventional method. It was because the students less seriously, boring and lazy  in learning using snowball throwing.

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

As mention in the first section, the researcher investigated whether or not there is any significant improvement of English reading comprehension of the first year students at MA MIFTAHUL MA’ARIF PRAYA. To answer this research problem, the researcher presented the statistic result and the description of the finding this study. After analyzing the data, the researcher found that the average score of each group was different. The pretest score of experimental group was 11.70and control group was 10.82. Then the posttest score of experimental group got 14.29 whereas, the control group got 12.82. The researcher analyzes use ANCOVA, from several calculations in the previous chapter; it was known that the observed F value was 1.26. After checking out in the table, it was found that critical with df 31 at 0.01 level of significance was 7.52. It means that observed F value was not higher than critical F value.

Based on what had been stated above, the researcher concluded that there was not a significant difference on students’ reading comprehension taught by using snowball throwing and those taught by using conventional teaching. It means that the null hypothesis is accepted and the research hypothesis is rejected. From the explanation above, it could be said that teaching English using snowball throwing is not as effective as using conventional teaching.

In accordance with the result of the study, the researcher provided suggestions for the English teacher and future researchers. First, the English teacher should think about using snowball throwing in order to get better comprehension as proven from the result of this study. Then the teacher should choose the appropriate materials related to the topic to improve the students’ interest and active in the learning process. In making variation of the activities, the teacher can improve from the original one combine with the new one that is snowball throwing method.

The next suggestion is directed to future researchers. First, the future researchers are expected to take longer time to conduct such study in order to enlarge the treatment and to be able to improve reading comprehension, besides that she or he should do the research intensively so that the result can be reliable and valid. Then, for the future researchers who use snowball throwing should enlarge his or her understanding about snowball throwing and change the supplementary materials correlated to its classroom activities.