THE IMPACT OF DIRECTED READING THINKING ACTIVITY ON STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to determine whether there was a significantdifference in reading comprehension achievement between eighth-grade juniorhigh school students taught using the Directed Reading Thinking Activity(DRTA) strategy and those taught using the traditional teaching method, as wellas whether the DRTA strategy significantly improved students' readingcomprehension achievement. This investigation employed a quantitativeapproach with a quasi-experimental design, which included a control groupbefore and after the exam. The sample included 72 eighth-grade children fromtwo intact classes, with one serving as the experimental group and the other asthe control group. The experimental group was taught using the DRTA processin three stages: Predict, Read, and Prove, whereas the control group was taughtusing conventional methods. The data were obtained using a multiple-choicereading comprehension exam with 50 valid items, and the results were analyzedusing an independent samples t-test and a paired samples t-test with a 0.05significance threshold. The results revealed that the experimental group's meanscore increased from 37.06 in the pre-test to 73.94 in the post-test, whereas thecontrol group increased from 39.67 to 58.39. The experimental group had a meangain score of 36.89, compared to the control group's 18.72. The independentsamples t-test yielded a p-value of 0.000 (t = 10.620, df = 55.070), as did thepaired samples t-test (t = -44.052, df = 35). These findings show that the DRTAtechnique had a considerable impact on, and significantly. These data show thatthe DRTA technique had a substantial impact on and enhanced the readingcomprehension achievement of eighth-grade junior high school pupils