THE EFFECT OF APPL PLYING SUMMARIZING STRATEGY TOWARD TO

STUDENTS’ READING NG COMPREHENSION IN EXPOSITION N TEXT:

An Experimental Resea
search at Second Grade Students of MAN 2 P
Padang
1
Amelia Hamida
H , Zainuddin Amir2, Fitrawati3
English Department
F
Faculty of Languages and Arts
State University of Padang
em
email: amhel_khan@yahoo.com

Abstrak
Penelitian ini bertu
tujuan untuk melihat dampak penggunaan str strategi
meringkas terhada dap pemahaman siswa dalam membaca.. Jenis
penelitian ini adala
lah penelitian eksperimen. Populasi penelitiatian ini
siswa kelas XI MA AN 2 Padang tahun ajaran 2011-2012. Samppelnya
terdiri dari dua kela
elas yaitu kelas XI IPA 1 sebagai kelas eksper erimen
dan XI IPA 2 seb ebagai kelas control dengan menggunakan teknik t
cluster random sampmpling. Tes dilakukan dua kali: pretest dan pos
osttest.
Data berupa nilaii tes
t pemahaman membaca oleh kedua kelom lompok
sampel dianalisis sesecara statistik dengan menggunakan rumuss t-test.
Berdasarkan hasil il hitungan ini, disimpulkan bahwa penggu gunaan
strategi meringkass dalam pemelajaran membaca dapat membe berikan
pengaruh yang le lebih baik terhadap pemahaman siswa dalam d
membaca.

Kata kunci: strateg

egi meringkas, pemahaman membaca

A. Introduction
In this information andan communication era, reading is a veryy important
activity. It is so becausee reading is a useful activity in getting information,
in
knowledge, technology, and an pleasure. In line with the importance of o reading
activities, it is appropriate
ate if the reading becomes an important ppart of the
language skills that is deve
veloped in school. In School-based curriculum
lum (KTSP),
teaching English subjectt uuses genre-based approach. The purpose of o reading
subject at second grade of senior high school is to make studentss be b able to
understand the idea in functional
fu text and in short essay focusess in report,
narrative, spoof, analytical
al exposition, and hortatory exposition form iin order to
increase students’ knowlededge and are accepted in daily life. The indica
cators of the
reading are finding topic ic or general idea from the text, main idea, id detail
information, and meaningg oof the words or phrase and reference basedd on o the text
(Depdiknas: 2006).
Based on preliminary ary study in MAN 2 Padang, students’’ ability in
comprehending texts wass still
s low. It was supported by the data takeken from an
English teacher of MAN 2 Padang. There were 63% of the students w who got the
score under 65 (standard score)
s in reading test, and the average scor
ore was 51.
From the result of the test,
tes it could be concluded that the weaknes esses of the
 The Effectt oof Applying Summarizing - Amelia Hamida, Zainuddin
din Amir, Fitrawati

students in comprehe hending a text were the ability of identifying ng main idea of a
paragraph, the patternrn of the text, and details.
It was assumed tthat there were several possible causes thatt mightm contribute
to the students’ low ability in reading comprehension. It mightt appear from the
students’ side that ca
caused their reading abilities low. First, the students
stu were rare
to activate their prior
ior knowledge or previous experience while rreading. Second,
the students had lack
ck of vocabularies. The last, the students did not n know how to
read well.
The teacher mig ight also influence to the students’ ability lity, especially in
teaching reading pro rocess. The teacher had problem in choos osing appropriate
strategy in teaching rreading to improve students’ reading compre rehension. So far,
the way of teacher teaching
te is good. Teacher uses one strategyy iin teaching or it
can be said that thee teacher only uses question answer strategy gy. However, the
strategy used by th the teacher is assumed not fulfil students ts’ needs yet in
comprehending a text xt.
In teaching readading by using this strategy, the teacher focuses
foc on giving
questions whether it is in pre-reading, whilst-reading, and postt reading.
r Teacher
also gives more emp mphasis on understanding grammar and patte ttern of a text in
teaching reading prococess. However, the explanation of getting thee main idea is not
practiced in-depth.
Due to some diffifficulties in reading comprehension, teacherr should
s overcome
these problems by fin finding the best strategy in teaching readingg comprehension.
However, this studyy iis going to focus on how to help students in comprehending
the text by looking for fo the topic, main idea, and some important nt ideas. Besides,
this study will give another
an strategy to the teacher that can be appli
plied in teaching.
Summarizing can an be one of the strategies in teaching readingg comprehension.
This strategy offers comprehending
c a text by looking for the main
ain idea and some
important ideas (Marzarzano, Pickering, and Pollock, 2001). For exa xample in reading
exposition texts, sum mmarizing is needed in order to get the com omprehension. By
using this strategy, readers
rea can find the main idea of each paragrap aph easily.
So far, the teachcher has not used this strategy yet. Even thoughth there is a
summarizing task, the th teacher does not give a clear techniquee how to write a
summary. However, r, in this study, summarizing strategy is aim aimed to improve
students’ reading comprehension
co and it is not focus on writi iting a summary.
Summarizing can bee done orally, in writing, through groups or ind individually (West
Virginia Departmentt of o Education, 2011)
Because of thee reasons
r above, summarizing strategy willl be b applied. This
study is going to investigate whether summarizing strategy gy contributes to
students’ reading comprehension
co or not. Therefore, the resea earcher wants to
conduct a research aabout the effect of applying summarizing strategy s towards
students’ reading com mprehension in second grade of MAN 2 Padan ang.
Summarizing stratrategy will be discussed in depth in these follo
llowing items.
1. Definition of Su ummarizing Strategy
Summarizing stra trategy is a set of steps that a student followss to
t determine the
gist of the chunk off iinformation that is being summarized. Summ marization based
on West Virginia Deppartment of Education (2011) is the main idea eas of the text are

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 eaching, Vol. 1 No. 1, September 2012, Serie B
Journal of English Language Tea

restated as few words as po possible. It can be done orally, in writing, throu

ough groups
or individually. Accordingg to t Desprit (2008) summarizing is telling thee mmain ideas
or events of a story in youryo own words. Zwiers (2004) says summar arizing is a
strategy which involves rep epresenting, in a few sentences and in your own wn words.
Dole et al. (1991) descr
scribe summarizing as follows:
Often confused w with determining importance, summarizingg is a
broader, more synynthetic activity for which determining import rtance
is a necessary,, but not sufficient, condition. The ability lity to
summarize informrmation requires readers to sift through largee unitsu
of text, differentia
tiate important from unimportant ideas, andd then
synthesize those ideas
id and create a new coherent text that st stands
for, by substantive
ive criteria, the original. This sounds difficult,
lt, and
the research demon onstrates that, in fact, it is. (p.224)
In short, summarizingg strategy
s is the strategy of teaching reading in giving the
main point only about som omething. It is a brief statement that reviewss the major
idea of something that hass been read. In summarizing, it is needed to separate
se the
important ideas from the unimportant
un one.
2. Types of Summarizin ing Strategy
Harvey & Goudvis (20 2000) says that there are several ways of think inking about
the types of summarization ion strategies. One way of thinking about th the types of
summarization strategies th that might be taught in the classroom is by the length of
text.
a. The Paragraph Su ummarization Strategy
This strategy focuseses on students reading one paragraph at a timeme, stopping
at the end of each parag
ragraph, and then asking some questions to find ind the main
idea and supporting details.
de Students can tell someone what they ey think the
paragraph is about, or theyth can write it.

b. The Section Summ marization Strategy

This strategy focuse
uses on students reading a multi-paragraph section
se that
covers a topic. The stud
udent begins by raising questions about whatt tthe section
might be about. As the t students read, they are prompted to make one
important summary sta tatement about each paragraph; at the end, theyth answer
the questions they rais
aised as the beginning of the section, statee oor write a
connected summary usi using the important statements recorded durin ring reading,
and then describe how w this section relates to the preceding andd following
sections.
c. The Multi-Section n Summarization Strategy
This strategy focus
uses on the type of summarization that is re required for
report writing. As thee student
s reads each section in a chapter or chapter
ch of a
book, he/she makes att le
least three summarizing important statements. ts.
On the other handand, Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock (200 001) divide
summarizing into threeree types. The first is narrative. It is for summarizing
sum
stories or other narrativ
tives. Second is Topic-Restriction-Illustrationon. It is for
summarizing informatio tional or explanatory text. The last is definitio
tion. It is for
summarizing text thatt ddefines a concept or a term.

94
 The Effectt oof Applying Summarizing - Amelia Hamida, Zainuddin
din Amir, Fitrawati

In this study
dy, researcher is going to have a resea earch on section
summarization strategy.
str It means applying a summarizing strategy
st in multi-
paragraph in expo
positional texts.
3. The Advantages es of Applying Summarizing Strategy
Jones (2009) stat
tates about the advantages of using summarizin ing strategy. First,
it helps students lea
earn to determine essential ideas and consol solidate important
details that support th
them. Second, it enables students to focus on key words and
phrases of an assigne
ned text that are worth noting and rememberi ering. The last, it
teaches students how w to take a large selection of text and reducuce it to the main
points for more conci
cise understanding.
The following are
ar the advantages of applying summarizing st strategy based on
Adler (2001). First,, sstudents can identify or generate main ideas
as. Then, students
are able to connect th
the main or central ideas. Next, students aree able
a to eliminate
unnecessary informatation. The last, students are able to rememberr what
w they read.
It can be said that
th summarizing makes the students get the he essential ideas.
Students are focus on key words. They can identify the main ide deas. Students are
also able to connect
ct all of the main ideas. Therefore, they remeember what they
read and they get thee comprehension as a objective of reading.

4. Teaching Readin ding through Summarization Strategy

There are somee steps
s of teaching summarizing strategy base sed on the site of
Kansas University (2007):
(20
a. Provide students ts with a text.
b. Before starting,, explain them the purpose of learning how w to summarize a
text.
c. Describe the stratrategy and make a list of the steps on the boaroard. Ask students
to write it and kee
keep the steps in their notes.
d. Have the studen ents read the text and circle unfamiliar wor ords and look up
circled words.
e. Ask students to rread the text again and take notes of main idea ide and important
details as they read.
re They can make notations on the text, by underlining or
highlighting.
f. Instruct students ts in pairs and have them practice describingg the steps to one
another as teacheher walk around the class and listen to their pra
ractice.
On the other hand nd, there are five instructional phases in modeleling this strategy
based on Karbalaei an and Rajyashree (2010):
a. The teacher defin
fines summarization strategy in context whilee reading.
r
b. The teacher mode dels and practices the strategy for one session.
n.
c. The students pra ractice summarization strategy taught with familiar
f contexts
and familiar tasks
sks.
d. The students evaluate
ev their own strategy used immediatel tely after practice
session.
e. The students arere asked to apply this strategy to new tasks.
In teaching readiding comprehension through this strategy, sum ummarization can
be applied in oral or in written. Like what has been said by tthe site of West

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 eaching, Vol. 1 No. 1, September 2012, Serie B
Journal of English Language Tea

Virginia Department of Education

Ed (2011), summarizing can be done ne orally, in
writing, through groups orr individually.
i
In brief, the way of teaching
t summarizing strategy that will bee applied is
referred to the steps that at offer by the site of West Virginia Depa partment of
Education (2011), Karbal alaei & Rajyashree (2010), and the site of o Kansas
University (2007). Howe wever, the rules and the quick steps of teaching
summarizing strategy are alsoal based on other experts like Marzano, Pick ickering, and
Pollock. It will make teachihing section summarizing strategy more perfec ect.
Here is the combinatioion way of teaching summarizing strategy that at is applied
in this research:
a. Teacher defines summ marizing strategy and explains what are thee purposep of
applying this strategy while
w reading.
b. Teacher asks a voluntee teer to read a paragraph
c. Teacher models how to apply summarizing strategy while reading
d. Teacher gets students ts to read the next paragraph and apply the strategy s of
summarizing
e. Students in pairs practi
ctice to summary the paragraph orally
B. Research Method
This research is an ex experimental research design because it wass going to
examine the hypotheses proposed
p to verify whether the use of sum summarizing
strategy affect students’ rea
reading comprehension. The population of this thi research
was the second grade stud tudents in MAN 2 Padang registered in acad ademic year
2011/2012. There were 373 73 students in 11 classes. Each class consisted of 24 until
37 students. The sample w was XI IPA 1 as experimental group and XI IPA 2 as
control group. It was choseosen by using cluster random sampling. Thee number n of
the students in each class wwas 32 students.
The researcher used reading
re comprehension test as instrument. The he test used
was in a form of multiple le choices. The test was tried out to other clas lasses which
were not taken as samples. s. After the test was tried out, the researcher an analyzed the
scores of the students. Then
hen the pretest and posttest were given to thee sstudents in
experimental and controll groups. The students in both group, wass given the
reading test. The materiall tthat was used in posttest was same with thee m material in
pretest.
C. Discussions
The following table summarized
su the result of statistical analysiss of
o the pre-
test scores for both classes.
s.

Table 1.
The Analysis of Students’
St Pre-test Scores in Experimental andd Control
Class

Expe
perimental Class ( x1 ) Control Class ( x2 )
n 32 32 Tobserved=
x 59.97 58.75 0.59
Sum( x) 1919 1880

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 The Effectt oof Applying Summarizing - Amelia Hamida, Zainuddin
din Amir, Fitrawati

Sum( x) 2
117125 112828

SS 2045 2378
SD 8.12 8.76

The following table

tab showed the result of statistically analysis
sis of the post-test
scores for both the experimental
ex and control class.
Table 2.
The
he Analysis of Students’ Post-test Scores in Control
Co
and Experiment Class

Experimental Class ( x1 ) Control Class (xx2 )

n 32 32
x 73.53 65.47
Sum( x)
2353 2095
Tobserved=
Sum( x) 2 4.26
174409 139455

SS 1390 2298
SD 6.59 8.60

Table 3.
The Gain of Exp
xperimental and Control Class between Pre-tes
test and Post-test

Experimental Class ( x1 ) Control Class

ss ( x2 )
n 32 32
x 66.75 62.11
Sum( x)
4272 3975

Sum( x) 2
291534 252283

SS 6378 5398.23
23
SD 10.06 9.23

Based on the find

ndings, it could be seen that using summarizin
ing strategy could
give better effect on students’ ability in reading the exposition
onal texts. It was
supported by Jones (2009)
(2 and Adler (2001) who say that summararizing strategy is

97
 eaching, Vol. 1 No. 1, September 2012, Serie B
Journal of English Language Tea

one of reading strategiess tthat can improve students’ reading compreh rehension. It
was seen from the gain of students’ pre-test and posttest’ scores. In pr pre-test, the
mean score of the experim imental class was 59.97 and it increased beca came 73.53.
Meanwhile, the mean scor ore of the control class was 58.75 and it incr creased into
65.47 in the post-test. In fa fact, the experimental class obtained higherr score than
the control class in the pos ost-test. The mean score of the experimental al class was
73.53 and the control classass was 65.47. It means the difference was statistically
s
significant. The increase in scores on the reading comprehension test from fro pretest
to posttest indicated the posositive impact of summarization instruction on students’
reading comprehension ach chievement.
Results of this investi stigation supported the use of summarizing ng strategy,
supposed to be the key com mponents of reading comprehension. First, the results of
reading comprehension test est revealed that the students learned to follow ow the steps
of the summarizing process ess to identify topics, main ideas, and details. s. Therefore,
the students’ performancee on posttest showed significant results forr using this
strategy.
Another important resulsult which should be taken into account in this is rresearch is
that the large majority off the
th students, whether those of high prior kno nowledge or
low amount of this knowled ledge, were able to reduce the passages includ uding two or
three paragraphs to a singl gle paragraph within a few sentences. They ddid it after
they learned a set of strateg
egies steps in summarizing strategy.
The design of this stra trategy is based on the combination of Wes est Virginia
Department of Education (2011),
(2 Karbalaei and Rajyashree (2010), andd the site of
Kansas University (2007) 7) theoretical model of text comprehensionn by using
summarizing strategy. It also
als depends on the knowledge acquired by others ot (e.g.,
Pressley, 2000), who poin oint to the importance of summarizing ass a tool for
improving reading compreh ehension. For years, and more recently, summa marizing has
been called as an importa rtant tool in reading comprehension by the National
Reading Panel (2000), and nd a lot of researchers (Brown et al., 1981 81; Duke &
Pearson, 2002; Pressley & BlockB 2002; Taylor, 1986).
The finding in this resesearch supported the previous findings by som ome experts
(Brown and Day, 1983) and an researchers (Karbalaei & Rajyashree, 201 010). It was
found that using summariz rizing strategy in reading helped students to get their
comprehension easily.
Based on the research finding
f related to the theories, it can be impli
lied that the
use of summarizing strate tegy is suggested to be used in teaching and learning
process especially to improv
rove students’ reading comprehension.
D. Conclusions and Sugg ggestions
Based on the data an analysis and findings that have been discuss ussed in the
previous chapter, it can bee concluded
c that using summarizing strategy gives
g better
effect in improving student nts’ reading comprehension at the second grad ade students
of MAN 2 Padang regist stered in 2011/2012 academic year. Before re giving a
treatment, the mean of stu students’ scores in the experimental group were w 59.97.
Then, after giving a trea eatment, the mean scores improved becomi ming 73.53.
Meanwhile, in the controll group,
g the mean scores of the students weree 58.75,
5 then
after using the treatments,, their
t scores become 65.47.

98
 The Effectt oof Applying Summarizing - Amelia Hamida, Zainuddin
din Amir, Fitrawati

Based on hypothe thesis testing, the value of t observed was biggerr thant the value of
the t table at the levell oof significance 0.05 (t observed > t table = 4.26 > 2.000). It could
be concluded that the he difference of students’ reading comprehens nsion between the
two groups was consi nsiderably significant. From that result, it was as decided that Ho
was rejected while Hi was accepted. Therefore, it can be stated ed that the use of
summarizing strategy gy has better effect on the students’ reading com omprehension.
It has been prov roved that the using of summarizing strategy gy gives positive
impact to reading com omprehension in particular and to the English tteaching.
Based on the find nding the researcher gives number of suggestio tions.
a. It will be ver ery valuable input, if English teachers especi ecially in MAN 2
Padang use summarizing
su strategy in their reading activity ity and can apply
summarizingg strategy on some kinds of texts since thee difficulty d of the
students in com omprehending the text in reading become thee main m problem.
b. For the nextt re researchers are expected to have more meetin tings time to apply
summarizingg strategy in order to get the data and to see the t improvement
of students’ co comprehension maximally.
c. For the schoo ool committee, it is suggested to give more facilitationfa about
preparation of using summarizing strategy.
Note: This article w was written based on author’s thesis with the t advisor Drs.
Zainuddin Am mir, M.Pd. and co advisor Fitrawati, S.S., M.P .Pd.

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