THE ABILITY OF THIRD YEAR STUDENTS OF SMAN 2

PEKANBARU IN COMPREHENDING FUNNY STORY

IlhamKhatib, Mahdum, M.Nababan

Email: khatib.ilham21 @gmail.com No. Hp: 085248962105
Student of English Language Education Department
Teacher’s Training and Education Faculty
Riau University

Abstract: This study was about the ability of the third year students of SMAN 2
Pekanbaru in comprehending funny story. The objective of this study was to know how
the ability of the third year students of SMAN 2 Pekanbaru in comprehending funny
story is. This research was conducted at SMAN 2 Pekanbaru on October until
November 2014. This is a desrciptive research. To get the data, the researcher gave a
set of questions about comprehending funny story. The questions consisted of Finding
factual information, finding main idea, guessing vocabulary in context, identifying
references, and making interferences. After analyzing the data, the writer found that the
mean of the students’ scores in finding factual information is 77, 05, finding main ideas
is 80, 58, guessing vocabulary in context is 82, 94, identifying references is 69, 41, and
making inferences is 84, 11. As a result there are 2 abilities in excellent level, 3 abilities
in good level and the most difficult one is in identifying references and the easiest one is
in making inferences. The mean of total score of the students ability in comprehending
funny story is 76, 19. It means that the ability of the third year students of SMAN 2
Pekanbaru in comprehending funny story is in Good level.

Keywords: Ability, Comprehending, funny story

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 THE ABILITY OF THIRD YEAR STUDENTS OF SMAN 2
PEKANBARU IN COMPREHENDING FUNNY STORY

IlhamKhatib, Mahdum, M.Nababan

Email: khatib.ilham21 @gmail.com No. Hp: 085248962105
Student of English Language Education Department
Teacher’s Training and Education Faculty
Riau University

Abstract: Penelitian ini mengenai kemampuan siswa kelas 3 SMAN Pekanbaru

dalam memahami funny story. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui
bagaimana kemampuan siswa memahami funny story. Penelitian ini dilakukan di
SMAN 2 Pekanbaru pada bulan Oktober sampai november 2014. ini adalah penelitian
deskriptif. Untuk mendapatkan data, peneliti memberikan sekumpulan pertanyaan
mengenai memahami funny story. Pertanyaan-pertanyaan yang diberikan terdiri dari
mencari informasi fakta, mencari ide pokok, menebak kosakata, mengidentifikasi
referensi, dan membuat interferensi. Setelah menganalisis data penulis menemukan
bahwa nilai rata-rata siswa dalam mencari informasi fakta adalah 77.05, mencari ide
pokok adalah 80.58, menebak kosakata adalah 82.94, mengidentifikasi referensi adalah
69.41 dan membuat interferensi adalah 84.11. sebagai kesimpulan , terdapat 2
kemampuan dalam kategori sangat baik dan 3 kemampuan dalam kategori baik.
Kemampuan paling sulit adalah mengidentifikasi referensi dan paling mudah adalah
membuat interferensi. Total rata-rata keseluruhan adalah 76.19. ini berarti bahwa
kemampuan siswa kelas 3 SMAN 2 Pekanbaru dalam memahami funny story dalam
kategori bagus.

Kata Kunci: Kemampuan, Memahami, funny story

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 INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, English plays an important part in people’s life in almost every

country. English has been used by many countries in the world in many aspects, such as
economics, politics, health, technology, and education. English is also used in
international events, such as seminars, public discussions, conference, and in making
treaty. People all over the world have been using English in formal and informal
situations. In some countries such as United States, England, Australian, those people
speak English as their mother tongue and in some countries such as Singapore,
Malaysia, and Philippine, the people speak English as the second language. Meanwhile
in Indonesia, people speak English as a foreign language
English as a foreign language in Indonesia is taught since Elementary School. It
has studied for six years, but the students still have problems in understanding English.
Studying English from Junior High School to Senior High School does not guarantee
that the students will absolutely be able to use English well, in written and spoken. In
studying English, the students should understand the four language skills in English.
They are listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
Reading is one the most important skills beside listening, speaking, and writing.
Reading is one of the steps to gain information, knowledge and idea from text or
printed-material. It will be always needed in learning process to develop the students’
ability to extract the message the text contains
Many experts have shared their own thinking or definition about reading.
According to Carrel et al. (1998) stated that reading is the most important of four skills
in a second language. It means that reading is the prominent skills that we have to
develop in the classroom. Through reading, our students will be easy to extract the
knowledge or information from their printed material.
Reading is an important skill to master English. Through reading we can
understand the lesson or get ideas and the points. Brown (1982) stated that the aim of
teaching reading is to comprehend and to react to what someone writes. However, this
skill is not easy to master, because the readers should have ability to comprehend the
author’s message. Most of the students get some problems in understanding English
texts.
Furthermore, reading has a purpose for learning. Donald Martin (1991) argues
that the purpose of reading is to connect the ideas on the page to what you already
known. If you do not know anything about a subject, then pouring words of texts into
your minds, is like pouring water into your hand. So, in reading you must know the idea
if you want to understand a text easily. For instance, you will jump to the page that
talking about football if you like sport. You have a framework in your mind for reading,
understanding and storing the information. However, it will be difficult for you in
understanding the text if you do not know anything about sport especially about
football.
Based on the description above, it can be concluded that reading is an interactive
and a thinking process of transferring printed letters into meaning in order to
communicate certain message between the reader and the writer.
Devine (1987) stated that reading comprehension is a process of the prior
knowledge of the reader which corporate with his appropriate cognitive skill and
reasoning ability to find out the concept from a printed text.

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 Burnes (1991) stated that reading comprehension is a reading thinking ability
and such relies for its success upon the level of intelligence of the readers, his or her
speed of thinking ability to detect relationship. Comprehension will usually be found in
the readers’ mind. It is obvious that reading comprehension is not only a process of
knowing the meaning of the words semantically, but also the process of catching the
ideas of the text whether it is explicit or implicit. In this case, the reader must be able to
interpret and alter what he reads in accordance with his or her prior knowledge about
the reading text. The reader must also organize the factual information in details such as
person, places, events and time.
Snow, Catherine (2002) stated that reading comprehension as the process of
simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and
involvement with written language. We use the words extracting and constructing to
emphasize both the importance and the insufficiency of the text as a determinant of
reading comprehension. Comprehension entails three elements:
Duke and Pearson (2002) stated that reading comprehension research has a long
and rich history. There is much that we can say about both the nature of reading
comprehension as a process and about effective reading comprehension instruction.
Much work on the process of reading comprehension has been grounded in studies of
good readers. There are many kinds of English text, they are narrative, descriptive,
recount, exposition and so on
Narrative is one of the most common text that students have to deal. There are
many definitions of Narrative text. Whison (1980) stated that narrative is the form of
writing used to relate the story of acts or events. Then, Stanley, Shinkin and Lanner
(1998) stated that a narrative text is natural method of telling a story step by step. It is
obviously a valuable mode to use in retelling experiences. We have to be able to notice
among others when the story happened, the climax and the resolution. Good readers we
are required to guess and to predict the resolution in order to develop his imagination.
Narrative has many forms, they are myth, legend, mysterious tales, horror tales, fairy
tales, fable, funny story, and so on.
Funny story is an interesting text to read. Funny story can be divided into two
subtypes, they are anecdote and spoof text. Spoof is a text which tells factual story,
happened in the past time and will be closed by twist. The purpose is not only to tell the
past event but also to entertain the reader through the twist. It generally begins with with
orientation that provides background information of the story, such as who is involve,
where and what is happen. An anecdote is a short narrative that is interesting, amusing,
often based on a biographical incident, commonly acting out a specific historical
situation, Teichmann (2008). In other words, an anecdote is a short, short story; it does
not have a complicated plot like the short story often does, but it does have the five
"w’s" – who, what, when, where and why. An anecdote can be used in a descriptive
essay to show an individual in a situation that illustrates a certain aspect of that
individual’s character or personality.
Based on the explanation above, the writer is interested to carry out a research
entitled A Study on the Ability of Third Year Students of SMAN 2 Pekanbaru in
Comprehending funny story.

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 METHODOLOGY

This reasearch is intended to know the ability of third year students of SMAN 2
Pekanbaru in comprehending funny story. In order to get the data, the writer will give
a set of questions to the students. The student asked to answer the question of the
research. The test was consisted by 30 items from 6 different funny story, where the
students should select one corret answer of the multiple choice in 90 minutes. The
text was taken from the English textbooks and some sources from internet. And then,
the test was checked to get the score of students individually.
The population of the research is third year students of SMAN 2 Pekanbaru.
There were 40 students. Before conducting the research, try out was also done by 35
students in different class.
In analyzing the data, the researcher computed the real score of each student and
found out the mean score of all the students. In order to know the significant
difference of the students’ achievement in comprehending funny story, the writer
used t-test.

FINDING AND DISCUSSION

The result of the research was analyzed to find out the ability of the third year
students of SMAN 2 Pekanbaru in comprehending funy story. There were 5
components of reading that analyzed form the data, namely main idea, factual
information, references, making inference, and vocabulary.The presentation of
individual score of the students of SMAN 2 Pekanbaru in comprehending funny story
can be seen in the table.

Table 1: The Ability of Students’ in Comprehending funny story

Range
Ability Level Frequency Percentage Mean score
Score
81-100 Excellent 15 44
61-80 Good 14 41
41-60 Average 5 15 76.19
21-40 Poor 0 0
0-20 Very Poor 0 0
Total 34 100

Based on the table, it can be calculated the mean score of the students is 76.19 or
it was classified into good level.There was 15 student (44%) that was classified into
excellent. Next, 14 students (41%) were classified into good. And 5 students (15%)
were classified into average or medocre.

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 Table 2: The Ability of Third Year Students of SMAN 2 Pekanbaru in Finding
Factual Information
Range
Ability Level Frequency Percentage Mean score
Score
81-100 Excellent 11 32.35
61-80 Good 11 32.35
41-60 Average 9 26.47 77.05
21-40 Poor 2 5.88
0-20 Very poor 1 2.94
Total 34 100

The data states that 11 students are at the excellent level (32,35%), 11
students are at the good level(32,35%), 9 students are at the mediocre level(26,47%),
2 student is at the poor level(5,88%), and 1 students are at the very poor
level(2,94%).

Table 3: The Ability of Third Year Students of SMAN 2 Pekanbaru in

Finding Main Idea
Range
Ability Level Frequency Percentage Mean score
Score
81-100 Excellent 11 32.35
61-80 Good 18 52.94
41-60 Average 2 5.88 80.58
21-40 Poor 1 2.94
0-20 Very Poor 2 5.88
Total 34 100

The data states that 11 students are at the excellent level (32, 35%), 18 students
are at the good level (52, 94%), 2 students are at the mediocre level (5, 88%), 1
student is at the poor level (2, 94%), and 2 students are at the very poor level (5,
88%).

Table 4: The Ability of Third Year Students of SMAN 2 Pekanbaru in

Guessing Vocabulary in Context
Range
Ability Level Frequency Percentage Mean score
Score
81-100 Excellent 14 41.17
61-80 Good 13 38.23
41-60 Average 6 17.64 82.94
21-40 Poor 1 2.94
0-20 Very Poor 0 0
Total 34 100

The data states that 14 students are at the excellent level (41, 17%), 18 students
are at the good level (38, 23%), 2 students are at the mediocre level (5, 88%), 1
student is at the poor level (2, 94%), and there is no student is at the very poor level.

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 Table 4: The Ability of Third Year Students of SMAN 2 Pekanbaru in
Identifying References
Range
Ability Level Frequency Percentage Mean score
Score
81-100 Excellent 7 41.17
61-80 Good 13 38.23
41-60 Average 4 17.64 69.41
21-40 Poor 9 2.94
0-20 Very Poor 1 0
Total 34 100

The data states that 7 students are at the excellent level(20,58%), 13 students are
at the good level(38,23%), 4 students are at the mediocre level(11,76%), 9 student is
at the poor level(26,47%), and 1 students are at the very poor level(2,94%).

Table 5: The Ability of Third Year Students of SMAN 2 Pekanbaru in

Making Inferences
Range
Ability Level Frequency Percentage Mean score
Score
81-100 Excellent 16 47.05
61-80 Good 12 35.29
41-60 Average 3 8.82 84.11
21-40 Poor 3 8.82
0-20 Very Poor 0 0
Total 34 100

The data states that 16 students are at the excellent level (47, 05%), 12 students
are at the good level (35, 29%), 3 students are at the mediocre level (8, 82%), 8
student is at the poor level (8, 82%), and there is no student is at the very poor level

CONCLUSION

After analyzing the data, the writer found that the mean of the students’ scores in
finding factual information is 77, 05, finding main ideas is 80, 58, guessing vocabulary
in context is 82, 94, identifying references is 69, 41, and making inferences is 84, 11. As
a result there are 2 abilities in excellent level, 3 abilities in good level and the most
difficult one is in identifying references and the easiest one is in making inferences.
The mean of total score of the students ability in comprehending funny story is
76, 19. It means that the ability of the third year students of SMAN 2 Pekanbaru in
comprehending funny story is in Good level

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 RECOMMENDATION

Since the ability the ability of third year students of SMAN 2 Pekanbaru was in good
level, the teachers of SMAN 2 Pekanbaru who teach English subject should make the
best effort to improve the quality of their teaching and make the teaching learning
process more interesting. The teacher should give more exercise to the students to
practice reading English text. The students should read more English text to improve
their ability in reading and improve their vocabulary. In addition, this research can be a
reference for other writers to compare and guide their writing in order to get better
research finding.

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http://understandingtext.blogspot.com/2007/12/what-is-spoof-31.html