Vera Melinda

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The Use of Story Pyramid Strategy in Narrative Text for Enhancement Students’ Reading
Comprehension
Introduction
English as a foreign language is a language that is needed in the globalization era.
English is learnt in almost every school in the world, because nowadays there is much
information from newspaper, internet, television, and radio presented in English as the medium
of communication. In order to face the development of English, Indonesia takes English as one
of the subjects in the school curriculum. Based on School-based Curriculum, English curricula
for junior and senior high school stipulate that English subject should include four skills:
listening, speaking, reading and writing. Nevertheless, reading becomes very important to be
taught since most of the materials of teaching and learning are in written form. It means that
students need to improve their reading skills in order to understand the materials.
Johnson (2008:4) states that “reading is a constantly developing skill”. It means that the
students can master reading by practicing. In order to be good readers, the students have to
practice more and more. Reading activity can be silent (in our head) or aloud (so that other
people can hear). Reading integrates visual and non visual information. During the act of
reading, the visual information found on the page combines with the non visual information
contained in your head to create meaning. In that way, what’s in your head is just as important as
what is on the page in the process of creating meaning (reading). Ruddell (2005:30) states that
reading is the act of constructing meaning while transacting text. It means that reading is a
process of transferring ideas and information from the writer to the reader as a form of
communication. The reader’s ability to construct meaning from the text depends on his or her
ability to use information available in text. It may be new information or already known. In
short, it can be concluded that reading does not mean the activity to read aloud but to comprehend
the message and information in the text. Reading is very important to the students in schools, from
elementary schools to senior high schools and vocational high schools. As it is stated in
Permendiknas no.23 Tahun 2006, the aim of reading in the curriculum is to make students able
to comprehend the meaning of written language, both interpersonal and transactional. Students
are directed to understand many kinds of texts such as recount, descriptive, and narrative. They
are also expected to gain knowledge and information from the texts.
Wigfield and Perencevich (2004:227-228) proposes “Reading comprehension consists of
the processes of constructing conceptual knowledge from a text through cognitive interaction and
motivational involvement with the text. Reading comprehension definition contains the phrase
interaction with texts. This refers mainly to cognitive strategies that are central to reading
comprehension processes, such as: (a) activating background knowledge, (b) questioning, (c)
searching for information, (d) summarizing, (e) organizing graphically, and (f) structuring
stories. These cognitive strategies are the key forms of interacting with text that enable learners
to build new knowledge". RAND Reading Study Group Report (2002) in Bernhardt (2011:7)
define 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”.
 In Indonesia, English is used as subject matter in education and has been taught at the
level elementary school until university, as the highest education level. It means that in
Indonesia, English as the foreign language. They learn English to get more knowledge and
information written in English, in the highest education, learning English means not more than
knowledge the language so the learner can extend their knowledge on the real study.
The rank of Indonesia’s HDI for 2010 based on data available in 2011 and methods used
in 2011 is 125 out of 187 countries. In the 2010 HDR, Indonesia was ranked 108 out of 169
countries. The researcher measures student’s ability in reading comprehension through giving a
pre-test. The score show the mean score are 64,85. Indonesia’s HDI value for 2011 is 0.617,
positioning the country at 124 out of 187 countries and territories. Actually, between 1980 and
2011, Indonesia’s HDI value increased from 0.423 to 0.617, an increase of 45.9 per cent or
average annual increase of about 1.2 percent. It proof that students ability are still low. The
results of PISA 2012 database showed that Indonesian students’ reading literacy mean score was
396 while that of OECD’s was 496. This fact had ranked Indonesia 60th of 65 countries assessed
(OECD, 2013). The low achievement of Indonesian students in the National language reading
literacy had led us to the assumption that the Indonesian students’ EFL Literacy might have been
lower especially reading. . In the research on reading comprehension in Indonesia has revealed
that students’ comprehension in reading is low. The teacher only taught the students to read the
passages, finding the meaning of difficult words and answering exercises in teaching learning
process. In fact, the Eight C grade students of SMP N 1 Kemusu face difficulty in reading
comprehension. The researcher find the problem in teaching reading are caused by fourth
aspects. First aspect is from the students, that can be identify as follow: (1) the students are not
able to describe factual or detail information of the text. (2) the students get difficulties in
recognize main idea. (3) some of students less mastering vocabulary. (4) the students have
difficulty to describe the word, phrase, and sentence meaning. (5) the students face a problem to
detect the reference of word or phrase. (6) the students learned passively because the students
feel ashamed to be active. The problem that caused from teacher aspect, there are (1) the teacher
does not give attention for each students in reading activity (2) the teacher does not ask them to
find difficult words from text and (3) the teacher mostly used old technique to teach reading
skill. Third problem was from class condition, there are (1) classroom was very noisy, (2) most
of the students busy in their own activity. And Fourth problem was from school aspect. The
supporting facilities for English learning are not complete yet, such as, (1) LCD are not available
in each class, (2) there are no English book in the library and (3) supporting teaching media in
the classroom are minus. Actually, there are various reading techniques and strategies that can be
used in order to assist the students to gain the comprehension level as the goal of reading
activity. One of the strategies that can be used in reading activity is called Story Pyramid
Strategy.
Story pyramid strategy uses a pyramid as the answer. The role is the students must
organize the answer use limited number of word in part one, and summarize the text in part two.
It prove by Lenski (2001: 103) who states that “story pyramid is a strategy designs to help
student reading comprehension, but could also be used to focus on character, setting, and story
problems.” Moreover, According to Puthota (2011) “story pyramid is a strategy to ensure the
students thoroughly comprehend a variety of different aspect of a story by closely analyzing the
main character, setting, problem, events and solution”. Ideally, it can show student’s critical
thinking, because the students would analyze the text from the easy one to the difficult one based
on highest to the lowest pyramid. Thus, Ellery and Rosenboom (2011 : 138-139) divide “Story
pyramid into two kind of pyramid, it was narrative pyramid and nonfiction pyramid. The purpose
of this activity is to organize key element from context text. It makes the students know about the
structure of the story.” It means the students would understand the story based on the structure of
the text. Those activities help the students to learn how to organize the text well. The other aims
of this strategy are to check understanding of written text elements and to encourage summarize
from pyramid answer. Story pyramid strategy is an effective strategy to teach reading
comprehension. It required students to comprehend the text clearly. Through this strategy, the
students have to analyze the detail information and main idea of the text. It drilled students‟
critical thinking and develops student’s ability to organize important point of the text. A story
pyramid is a structured format students use to summarize the most important parts of story. This
strategy forces students to review and summarize the main points of a story. The procedure in
this strategy is after reading, students summarize the main aspects of the story in a pyramid form
with eight lines. The teacher may write instruction on the board, provide a handout with
instruction on it, or read instruction line by line, leaving time for students to write before heading
instruction (Jonson, 2006:184). Story pyramid strategy created better atmosphere in reading
class. The class condition is more enthusiastic, livelier and active. It was because students
motivation had been arose. The impact from that, student participation in reading activity grew
well. It will be evidence that the students enjoyed learning activity using story pyramid strategy.
The purpose of this paper seeks to elaborate how students can improve their reading
comprehension through story pyramid strategy in narrative text.
References:

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Feeny Jonson, K. 2006. 60 Strategies for Improving Reading Comprehension in Grades K-8.
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Wahyu Alfajar, D. 2015. Improving students’ reading comprehension on narrative text through
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Human Development Report 2011. Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All.
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