CLASSROOM ACTION RESEARCH PROPOSAL

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF SKIMMING AND SCANNING

TECHNIQUE TOWARDS STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION
OF EXPOSITION TEXTS

An Action Research in Grade 12 Classroom of Vocational High School in Bandung

By:
HERI KHAERUDIN HAQ
18026015710332_175 (CLASS F)

EDUCATION OF THE TEACHER’S PROFFESION

FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE EDUCATION
INDONESIA UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION
BANDUNG
2018
1. Background:
Reading comprehension is an important component of National Examination
Questions. This examination is held for students for every transition of schools levels, from
elementary to enter junior high, from junior high to enter senior high, and from senior high to
enter university. Particularly for the senior high school students, the expectation of their
reading skill becomes higher so that they can obtain good scores in English to enter the
university or will be one of working references.
Exposition text is one of text types of reading that presented in National Examination
Questions. The students are demanded to be skilled and having good understanding in Reading
especially in exposition text. However, not all expectations are always in line with the facts.
Many students still face difficulties in understanding english reading texts, particularly in one
of Vocational Senior High Schools in Bandung.
The main problems that students’ difficulties in understanding english reading texts is
how to identify the main idea and get detail informations of the reading text.
Accordingly, I would like to implant the Skimming and Scanning Technique to the
students for this research. I would further like to inquire whether these techniques also apply
to these students. Consequently, the question posed for this research is: Do the Skimming and
Scanning Technique improve students reading skill, especially in identifying main idea and
finding detail information in exposition texts? The result of this research is prepared to be a
benefit both of teachers and students in teaching reading for the English subject. Should the
experiment succeed; the teachers can use it as a reference in using effective the Skimming and
Scanning Technique in improving their students’ reading comprehension.

2. Research Question(s) :
Based on the explanation above, I wanted to conduct the research under the following
questions. Firstly, the writer focused How does skimming technique improve the students’ reading
skills in getting general ideas?. Secondly, the writer stressed How does scanning technique improve
the students’ reading skills in understanding specific information?.

3. Significance of the Study:

This research aimed to find out whether the skimming and scanning techniques can improve
students’ English reading comprehension in exposition texts, especially on identifying the main ideas
and detail information, in a senior high school in Bandung. The benefit that can be applied by the

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teacher from this research is to improve the result teaching and learning process in reading
comprehension that can be used to prepare students facing National Examination (UN). therefore, this
research can assist teacher in designing scientific and learning process and assist teachers how to
teaching reading comprehension especially in exposition texts.
Applying skimming and scanning technique in reading comprehension of exposition texts is
expected students’ increasing in their motivation and interesting in reading comprehension of
exposition text and improving their reading skill in getting general ideas and understanding
specific information in reading comprehension of exposition text.

4. Literature Review:
4.1 Reading Comprehension
A considerable amount of literature has been published on Indonesian Research Journal in
Education. According to Yusuf, Q. et al. (2017:45, as cited in Sheng (2000)). reading as the process
of communication between the reader and the writer to make sense of written or printed symbols,
which involves the recognition of letters, words, phrases and clauses, and comprehension. further adds
that interpretation, appreciation and application are much related to the process of reading. And thus,
reading comprehension is the process of getting the meaning from texts. The aim is to gain an overall
understanding about what is described in the text.
According to Yusuf, Q. et al. (2017:45, as cited in Hare and Milligan (1984)), the ability to
identify main ideas in a text is an important key to reading comprehension. Furthermore, the
recognition of the main idea is important because it does not only help readers to understand the
paragraph being read, but also to help them remember the content later. The main idea is not stated in
any particular sentence in the paragraph, but each sentence typically contains details that lead to a
common idea.

4.2 Skimming and Scanning Technique

- Skimming Technique
According to B. Fry, Edward (2000). Skimming is very fast reading. When you skim, you read
to get the main ideas and a few, but not all, of the details. To skim rapidly, you must leave out parts of
an article or story. Skimming is very useful skill. It will allow you to get information quickly from
anything you read. Knowing how to skim make you a better reader.
In skimming, try to get the main idea of every paragraph plus a few facts. You cannot to pick
up all the facts in the article, but you might pick up some facts, names, or numbers. Sometime the main
idea will no be the first sentence in the paragraph. In some paragraphs the main idea is located in the
middle of a paragraph or at the end. You will then have to spend some time looking for the key
sentence.

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- Scanning Technique
Scanning is a reading skill you use when you want to locate a single fact or a specific bit of
information without reading every part of story, article, list, or document. You use scanning every time
in your daily activities. For examples, you scan the television listing of newspaper or a magazine to
find the time and channel of a television show. Since the purpose of scanning is to locate information
quickly, a high rate of speed is essential. With clue word in mind, try to scan as much of the printed
matter as you can in the least amount time. Remember that you are searching for specific word; don’t
allow yourself to become distracted by words or ideas unrelated to the information you are scanning
to find.
Accuracy is just a essencial as speed when scanning. Since you are looking for specific
information, it is important that it be accurate. Once you have scanned to find the information you
need, check to be sure that it is correct. Scanning at high rate of speed is useful only if you find the
exact information you need. Your goal should be 100 percent accuracy.

4.3 Exposition Text

Exposition text is one of the genre text that is learned. The students must be knowledgeable
about the issue that will be discussed so they provide their opinion to support the issue. To be
knowledgeable, the writer should know much information about the issue that happens currently. The
students can get more information through reading. It is supported by Irwan, Anisa Fitri.et al et al.
((2018:1), as cited in Kirin (2010:286) which states that reading can be resources to elaborate ideas to
enhance writing task. So, before the students start to read, the students have to be knowledgeable about
the issue.
Exposition text is a text which discuss about something that happen in society. The writers
give their opinion about the phenomena that will be discussed. So, analytical exposition provides the
writer’s opinion about something that happens in the society. The social function of exposition is to
persuade the reader with the writer’s opinion about an issue.

5. Research Methodology
This research used a quantitative approach with the experimental design. According to
Yusuf, Q. et al. (2017:45, as cited in Creswell (2003) concisely defines quantitative research
as a type of research that explains phenomena by collecting numerical data and analyze them
using mathematically based methods. The results are typically presented using statistics, tables
and graphs. The design of the experiment is the “one group pretest-posttest design” Yusuf, Q.
et al. (2017:45, as cited in Setiyadi, (2008 p. 118). It involves pre-test (O1), a treatment (X),
and post-test (O2). The treatment is to teach the students reading comprehension of exposition
texts by using the Skimming and Scanning Technique. The selection of exposition text refers

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to the national curriculum, syllabus, and lesson plans because this type of text is taught in the
English subject.
As for the samples of this study, students will then purposely selected as the respondents
of this study based on the results of reading test as mentioned earlier in the introduction of the
paper. The students with the lowest scores will be grouped and a number of 30 students become
the samples of this experiment.
Data will be collected from a pre-test and a post-test. The tests consist of a set of
multiple choice questions. Since the difficulties which students will identify the main idea and
find the detail information, therefore, the treatment and tests also focuse on improving the
students’ comprehension on these aspects. There are 20 questions for each test; ten questions
inquire about the main idea and another ten questions inquire about detail information. At the
end of the day, the standard for senior high school students’ English competence is measured
by the National Examination (UN). For that reason, the researchers selected and adapted the
questions for the tests from the National Examination (UN) questions year 2015 until 2017,
and are related to the topic learned by the students, which is report text. Since the questions are
deemed standard from the Indonesia’s Ministry of Education, validity and reliability tests on
the test instruments are not conducted.

Technique of data collection

The pre-test will be given to collect students’ reading scores prior to treatment. It is
given in order to know their achievement of reading comprehension before the experiment,
especially on identifying main idea and finding the detail information. After a short
introduction in the first meeting of teaching experiment, I will distribute the pre-test to the
students. The treatment takes place in three class meetings. It started after the pre-test in the
first meeting.
The learning process begin with a discussion about report text (function, general
structure, main idea and detail information). Then, I will present the material about report text
directly and ask them to underline the main idea and to find the detail information needed in
text. I further explaine about speed reading techniques that I can help them understanding the
text better and faster; they are skimming and scanning techniques.
Finally, the post-test will be given to measure the students’ reading comprehension after
the treatment of Skimming and Scanning Technique is given in class. The teacher distribute
the post-test to the students individually. These post-test questions are different with pre-test
questions, but the difficulty level is similar.

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6. References
Yusuf, Q. Et al. (2017). “Skimming and Scanning Techniques to Assist EFL Students in
Understanding English Reading Texts”.
https://www.online-journal.unja.ac.id/index.php/irje/article/view/4338

Ngoc, Nguyen Thi Minh.(2015). “Implementation Of Skimming And Scanning Techniques

In Teaching Reading Comprehension”.
nnkt.ueh.edu.vn/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/13-2015.pdf

Fry, Edwar B.(2000). “Skimming and Scanning: Jamestown’s Reading Improvement”. Jamestown
Publisher. Chicago.