The Effect of Previewing Text as Pre-reading Activity on Freshmen Reading Comprehension Skill in English Education Department of University of Islam Malang

Abstract

EFL students have several problems in understanding English texts. These issues are proven when the students have no idea with unfamiliar vocabularies and the concepts of the text. There are five difficulties of academic reading in college students: the length of time to finish reading the whole text, getting information that is needed to complete the question in the allotted time, taking notes while reading the text, recalling their previous knowledge while reading the text, and the last is making a note that is written by their own words. In order to increase reading comprehension skill of the students, pre-reading activities can be used as a mean of stimulating prior knowledge related to the material. These activities can be practiced to increase the accuracy and efficiency of students reading, therefore it can minimize the time and effort required to read. This study investigated the effect of previewing text on freshmen’s reading comprehension skill in English Education Department of University of Islam Malang. The research design used in this study was quantitative, quasi experimental design. There were 52 first year students from English Education Department as the research participants and divided into two groups, control and experimental group. The control group consisted of 26 students from class A, and 26 students from class B were chosen as experimental group. The treatment given was providing preview text of “Birth of Blues” which consisted of 372 words, while the control group were given the same passage without preview text. The writer provided 10 multiple-choices and 5 true-false questions to measure the students’ comprehension toward the text. To analyse the data, the writer used Independent T-test from SPSS 20. The result showed that the mean of control group was (M=52.31) and the mean of experimental group was (M= 67.69). In the same case, the p value was 0.000 (p < 0.05). After knowing the result of the data, it indicated that providing preview text strongly affected freshmen’s reading comprehension skill of English Education Department of University of Islam Malang. In conclusion, the more the students can do previewing before reading the text, the more they can understand the whole text easily and they will achieve better reading skill.