THE APPLICATION OF PARTNER READING STRATEGY IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION

The objective of this research is to find out that the Application of Partner Reading Strategy improves students’ reading comprehension. The population was the grade Eight students at SMP Negeri 1 Toribulu. The researcher used quasi-experimental design. The researcher sample were VIII A as the experimental group which consisted of 28 students and VIII B as the control group which consisted 28 student. The test was administered twice: pre test and post test. The data were analyzed statically in order to find out the significant achievement of the students in the pre test and the post test. The experimental group was given the treatment by applying Partner Reading Strategy


INTRODUCTION
Reading is one of the main skills in English that plays an important role in helping students to interpret language. Reading makes students able to find messages from texts. Reading helps students to learn to think. Then, it is a good way to find out new ideas, fact and experiences.
Based on curiculum 2013, one of the goals in teaching reading is the students are expected to understand various types of the text, such as narrative, recount, procedure, factual report, descriptive and hortatory exposition. The spesific objective of the language teaching and learning process is understanding written text, the students should be able to find the main ideas, detail information, certain information and social function of the reading text. In fact, most of students can read the textbook well, but have difficulties to comprehend the reading text. Based on the researcher preliminary observation, students do not have sufficient vocabulary to support their comprehension.
Most of the students did not know the meaning of all the words they read in the text book that has caused them to read slowly. Consequently, the students lost their interest to read the text and considered that reading is a boring activity. Another problem is that some of English teacher still uses traditional method in teaching reading. During teaching process, the teacher spends a lot of times only to ask the students to read the text book. After reading the text, the students answer comprehension questions which are provided in the text book after that the teacher ask the students about some difficulties that the students have in doing the task. This activity seems to be unpleasant or not interesting for students to participate the class.
In this study, the researcher tries to find out what strategies are effective for teaching reading and make students more interested. According to Melanie (2008:42), Partner reading is another fun and effective pedagogical strategy for promoting the development of reading The teaching method should support them to get message from the text in joyful teaching atmosphere.
The researcher suggests that partner reading is effective to several reasons. First, students benefit from practicing the reading of connected text, and this approach ensures that students spend significant amounts of time reading aloud or following along with their partner. Second, partner reading provides learners with the opportunity to read a text repeatedly, which supports the development of automatic word reading. Third, The Application of Partner Reading Strategy in Improving Reading Comprehension | 213 students receive correction and support from their partner during the reading. They areable to practice a text that they cannot yet read independently (Rasinski,2003). Taken together, these factors promote accelerated progress in the development of reading.
Based on the explanation above, the researcher conducted a research to examine whether or not the using partner reading strategy improves students reading comprehension at the eight grade students of SMP Negeri 1 Toribulu.

METHOD
This research conducted quantitatively in processing the data and getting the result. The researcher used a quasi-experimental research design. Every group was given the pretest, provided the treatment and given the posttest.
The results of the research are gathered from tests (pretest and posttest). The researcher gave tests (pretest and posttest) as the main instrument in collecting data to the students. The pretest aimed at finding out the students' reading skill before they got the treatment, while the posttest aimed at measuring the progress of students' writing skill after the treatment. The test focused on on literal reading comprehension and the use of descriptive text.
The pretest was administered to measure the prior knowledge of the students before the treatment using by using Partner Reading Strategy. The pretest of 8-A as the experimental class and 8-B as the control class.
The posttest was given in order to measure the students' reading skill after giving the treatment The population of this research was the eight grade students of SMP Negeri 1 Toribulu. There were two classes, 8-A and 8-B. The total number of the population was 56.
Sample is a representative population of the research. Creswell (2012:142) states that sample is a subgroup of the target population that the researcher plans to study for generalizing about the target population. In this research, the researcher took two classes as the sample. The researcher took class 8-A as the experimental group (consists of 28 students) , class 8-B as the control group (consists of 28 students). Moreover, the samples were selected through the total sampling technique.
214 | e-Journal of ELTS | Vol. 9 No. 3 | September-Desember 2021 | pp. 211-222 Related to the title of this research, the independent variable is the use of partner reading strategy, while dependent variable is the students' reading comprehension of the eight grade students of SMP Negeri 1 Toribulu.
The researcher used one instrument. It was the test consisting of pretest and posttest. The pretest was used before the treatment in order to assess the students' reading skill. The posttest was given after the treatment in order to measure/assess the students' progress after the treatment.
The format of the pre-test is comprehension questions and multiple choice. The scoring system for comprehension questions is present in the following table: Table 1 The Scoring System of the Test

No.
Kinds of Item Number    The data shows that the students' mean score of posttest in control class was 75.
Therefore, the improvement of the experimental class is more significant than the control group.
The Application of Partner Reading Strategy in Improving Reading Comprehension | 217 The computation above shows the scores of both class are different. The mean score of posttest of experimental class is 88. while the mean score of posttest of control group is 75. Therefore, this result revealed the fact that the score obtained by the experimental class in posttest is clearly higher than the score obtained by the control class. It means that the treatment applied by the researcher is successful.
In relation to the process of colleting the data, in the third, fourth, fifth and sixth treatments, he found that the students could accomplish the activities better than in the previous first and second treatment. It showed that they become more comfortable with the strategy and they really enjoyed the learning process better than the previous first and second treatment. Also, they improved their vocabulary mastery by using using Partner Reading Strategy. It indicates that the application of Partner Reading Strategy is effective.
After getting the students' mean score of pretest and posttest in experimental and control class, the researcher continued to analyze the deviation (D) and the square deviation (D 2 ) of both experimental class and control class. Table 3 shows the total deviation of experimental class was 989 and the total square deviation was 3686. The highest deviation (D) score was 51,4and the lowest deviation was 17,1.While the highest square deviation (D 2 ) was 2641,96 and the lowest square deviation was 519,84. Table 4 shows the highest deviation (D) of control class was 28,5 and the lowest deviation was 11,4. While the highest square deviation (D 2 ) of control class was 812.25, and the lowest square deviation was 129.96 Furthermore, the researcher needed to analyze the data statistically in order to find out the significant difference between the two classes.
Based on the computation, the researcher found that the result of t-counted is 1.87. To prove whether hypothesis of the research is accepted or rejected, the researcher tested the hypothesis. If the t-counted is higher than t-

DISCUSSION
In doing the research, the researcher firstly conducted the pretest for experimental and control class. The researcher conducted the pretest to measure the students' prior knowledge in reading comprehension. By looking at the result of the pretest, none of the students of the experimental and control class got high score. All students got lower the minimum the standard achievement of 75. It means that both experimental and control class got deficiency in reading comprehension.
According to Guido (2017), there are some advantages and disadvantages of partner reading strategy stated as follows, Increased Literacy Scores -Students who read and discuss story passages with their peers recall more content and score higher on assessments, Developed Reasoning and Critical Thinking Skills -Students who work in pairs and groups typically perform better on tests that involve reasoning and critical thinking, this is largely because students must become active learners, discussing and rationalizing lesson concepts in their own words, Improved Confidence and Interpersonal Skills, Increased Comfort and Openness-this helps create an environment in which students are more comfortable to ask questions and work through challenging problems in an environment free from class ridicule, Versatility -You can run a range of peer teaching exercises based on different subjects and objectives, possibly involving other grades and classes. Lots of ideas can lead to lots of fun for your students. Here are the disadvantages to weigh against the aforementioned advantages, Student Inexperience-although you can share teaching tips and guidelines with students, they won't become expert educators. There's always a chance the tutor won't properly support the tutee, giving ineffective feedback or unneeded criticism, Student Hesitancy -Pairing students together can backfire, as some may feel inferior being taught by The Application of Partner Reading Strategy in Improving Reading Comprehension | 219 certain peers. On the other hand, some students won't put effort into the exercise, as they won't be keen on it from the get-go. This can lead to tense relationships and, according to the same book, scarce content coverage, Lack of Confidentiality-in many types of peer teaching scenarios, other students can clearly see who the tutor is and who the tutee is. This means there may be too much transparency with regards to whose excelling and who's struggling. There are exceptions, though. For example, activities in which students take turns teaching.
Based on the result of pretest, the researcher found out that the students are hard to understand the meaning of the word. It was proved when the researcher gives a task the students always asked the meaning of several words. They were lack of vocabularies; they also got hard to understand the passage and much dependent on dictionary. Consequently, the students could not answer the comprehending questions in time because they have to find some word on dictionary before answer the questions.
After getting the students' problems based on the result of the pretest, the researcher gave treatments to both classes for fifth meetings. Each meeting consisted of 3x45 minutes. The researcher applied Partner reading strategy to teach reading comprehension to experimental class. Whereas, the control class was taught by the researcher with conventional way as their teacher taught in school.
First of all, for the first meeting the researcher started by introduced the topic to the students and gave brief explanation about partner reading strategy and the way the researcher applied that method in the class for next meetings. Before the researcher divides the students into several pairs, the researcher started with asked the students some questions that related to the topic to warm up the students. After gave the explanation, researcher divides members of the class to some pairs based on the result of pre-test. The lower students paired with the higher students. After that researcher gave a reading text to each pairs and they take turns reading the text and they discussed the text. The researcher gave them several comprehension questions and asked them to work together as pairs. While doing the task most of the students asked the meaning of words that they do not know, and some of them using dictionary to translate each words. That caused them solved the task slowly. Consequently, the time is end and some of them do not finish yet. At the second meeting before researcher started the second treatment, researcher gave the class a review about last meeting and also gave suggestion and motivation to the students so they will more enjoy the class. As same as the first meeting, she started with asked the students some questions that related to the topic to warm up the students.
For the second meeting the topic was about tourist destination, the researcher gave words on whiteboard as clue for the student to guess the topic, after that she divide the students into pairs, gave them reading text with different topic in descriptive text, they take a turns reading and answer comprehension questions that gave by the researcher.
For the third meeting researcher started the class with gave pictures as clue, the students guessed the topic by looked at the pictures. By giving pictures to the students it also improved students' vocabulary mastery in order to help the students in their reading comprehension. After the brain storming researcher divide them into pairs, gave them a reading text, they take a turns reading and answer several comprehension questions.
For the fourth and fifth meeting the topic was about person. The researcher give some questions that related to the topic to warm up the students. After the warm up the students started to read the reading text and solved several comprehension questions with their partner.
On the last meeting, after giving the students' treatment application partner reading strategy for fifth meetings researcher gave them a post-test to find out whether or not the treatment that the researcher used is effective to improves students reading comprehension. Based on the result it is indicated that the application of partner reading strategy brought significant improvement in terms of students' ability in comprehending reading text and it also can be said that partner reading strategy is a good strategy for teaching reading.

CONCLUSIONS
After discussing and analyzing the data in the previous chapter, the researchers come to a conclusion that the application of Partner Reading Strategy can improve students' reading comprehension of the eight grade students at SMP Negeri 1 toribulu.
First, the application of Partner Reading Strategy is a good strategy to improve students' ability in reading. The result of the data analysis indicated that the research hypothesis The Application of Partner Reading Strategy in Improving Reading Comprehension | 221 is accepted. It is proved by the result of the t-counted value (1.87) was higher than the t-

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
In arranging this article, the researchers would like to thank the lecturers Dr.