The Effect of Synthesizing Strategy on Students’ Reading

Comprehension on Tourism at the English Class of Economic

Students

Sondang Manik

Nommensen HKBP University, Jl..Sutomo 4A , Medan , Indonesia

Department of English -Language and Arts Faculty

Keywords: Reading Comprehension on Tourism, Synthesizing Strategy.

Abstract: This study focused on finding out the Effect of Synthesizing Strategy on Students’ Reading Comprehension

on Tourism at English Class of Economic students of UHN Medan. Nowadays Indonesian government

focus on improving Tourism and all the people support the government decision. There are ideas and one of

them is by putting the topic of tourism text in some curriculum of English reading subject. Using the

tourism text in the reading text. This study was conducted in experimental Quantitative design. The

population of this research are 45 students. There were 38 students of the Economic Department students as

the sample of research. This study was conducted with two randomized groups namely Experimental Group

and Control Group. The experimental group was taught by using Synthesizing Strategy, while control group

was taught without Synthesizing Strategy. The instrument of collecting the data was a multiple choice test.

The data were analyzed by using t-test. The calculation shown that t-observed (3.65) was higher than t-table

(1.68) at the level of significance (α) 0.05 with the degree of freedom (df) 58. It means that there was a

significant effect of Synthesizing Strategy on students reading comprehension. The null hypothesis (H0) is

rejected and alternative hypothesis (Ha) is accepted.

1 INTRODUCTION

Indonesia is a lovely country so many beautiful

islands, places than can become interesting tourist

destination. Nowadays Indonesian government focus

on improving Tourism and all the people support

them so the topic of tourism need to put in some

curriculum of English subject, such as using the

tourism text in the reading text.

Based on the writers observation in the class

some the teacher teach them and only focus on the

grammar of the text not to the meaning of the text.

Most of the students become passive in the class, in

the process of teaching reading comprehension. The

students only read the text and answer the question

based on their English book without knowing how to

elicit prior knowledge and find spesific information

from the reading text and it can make them getting

bored.

This study intends to find out whether

synthesizing strategy can affect the students in

Reading comprehension on Tourism at the English

Class of Economic students of UHN Medan

1.1 The Significances of the Study

The finding of the study are expected to be useful:

1) Theoretically: the finding is useful as the model

of analyzing strategy. Using Synthesizing

Strategy in teaching Reading Comprehension is

also an experiment in improving teaching

reading, as an input to do further research related

to this study.

2) Practically, the finding of this research would be

a good contribution to enrich students’

knowledge on Tourism.

3) To plan a better teaching learning English using

synthesizing strategy in Reading Comprehension

and for students, and for English teachers to

increase their understanding about Synthesizing

Strategy.

The hypothesis of this study can be formulated

such as:

Manik, S.

The Effect of Synthesizing Strategy on Students’ Reading Comprehension on Tourism at the English Class of Economic Students.

DOI: 10.5220/0009903700002480

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Natural Resources and Sustainable Development (ICNRSD 2018), pages 401-407

ISBN: 978-989-758-543-2

401

Ha: There is a significant effect of Synthesizing

Strategy on students’ Reading Comprehension

on Tourism at the English Class of Economic

students of UHN Medan.

Ho: There is no significant effect of Synthesizing

Strategy on students’ Reading Comprehension

on Tourism at the English Class of Economic

students of UHN Medan.

1.2 Level of Reading Comprehension

Furthermore, Burns Paul (1984) states that there are

four types in level of comprehension skill, they are:

1. Literal Level

This level is the simple. The reader should

recognize stated main ideas, details, causes and

effects, sequence and through understanding of

vocabulary, sentence meaning and paragraph

meaning is important.

2. Interpretive Level

This level the reader should drawing inferences,

tapping into prior knowledge or experience,

attaching new learning to old information,

making logical leaps and educated guesses, and

reading between the lines to determine what is

meant by what is stated.

3. The Critical Level

This level, the students learn to evaluate and

judge the information and the author’s

presentation of it. The reader must be an active

reader questioning, searching for facts, and

suspending judgment until he or she has

considered all of the material.

4. The Creative Level

This level requires the students’ should think

creative about image or information of the text,

creative imagination is a concern with the

production of new ideas, the development of new

insights, fresh approaches, and original construct.

1.3 Synthesizing Strategy

Synthesizing can be uses for understanding Reading

Comprehension. Moreillon (2007) stated that

Synthesizing strategy is waive light on the

significance of texts from the reader’s point of view.

Synthesizing also involves bringing together

information from several sources.When the readers

synthesize,they sort and evaluate information, they

may find agreement among texts, or they may find

out conflicting “facts” like determining ideas and the

readers make it in a value of judgments. Students

access information efficiently and effectively, to

evaluate information critically and competenly, and

to use information accuratly and creatively.

According to Shannon Bungarner (2014)

“Synthesizing is the process whereby a student

merges new information with prior knowledge to

form a new idea, perspective, or opinion or to

generate insight.”

Synthesizing is a process of ordering, recalling,

retelling , and recreating information into a coherent

whole. Keene and Zimmermann in Moreillon (2007)

stated that Synthesizing requires that readers use the

strategies offered in this book to read,evaluate,and to

use ideas and information. Synthesizing requires

longer-term, in depth learning. When students are

exploring curriculum-based subject or independent

inquiry topics, the teacher-liblarian can over

expertise in teaching information literacy skills and

strategies.

In synthesizing information students must make

it in their own word. They must develop all of the

reading comprehension strategies to know the

meaning. They must connect the information that

they found in various resources and interpret it, and

put it back together into a transformed and coherent

whole. Students who master this strategy are

proficient in comprehending the texts that they read,

combining information from multiple source and

passing that information through their own

interpretations. Students must creates, develops, and

revies their schemas to synthesizing a text.

1.4 How to Teach The Strategy

According to Moreillon (2007), Synthesizing is a

process of learning from others ideas and

transforming those ideas through analysis and

interpretation to offer a new meaning. Through

synthesizing the learner makes information and

ideas his own. Synthesis reminds educators of the

importance of providing students with opportunities

to express their responses to the texts they read. If

students have been sharing, writing, drawing, and

using other sign systems to respons to texts, then

synthesizing is a natural outgrowth of their prior

literacy learning experience. A simple way to

express the components of synthesizing that may be

particularly appropriate to younger readers is

Information + Response = Synthesizing

Synthesizing requires that readers determine

main ideas from multiple sources, summarize

information and add their own interpretations.

Synthesizing strategy can help the readers record

main ideas and surprising information as well as

their connections, respons and interpretations.

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402

Bringing these strategies can helps readers to see

how comprehension strategies are related and to help

the readers be aware of the print and text features

that presents new information.

According to Stahl (2005), the researchers

concluded that explicit instruction on how to use and

evaluate information from multiple sources should

begin in elementary school. Teaching reading

comprehension strategy of synthesizing using

multiple text is a place to begin.

When more advanced readers interpret texts,they

explain meaning in relation to their own beliefs,

judgments or circumtances. To that end, another way

for students to conceive of synthesizing is

Information + Interpretation = synthesizing

Unit design is one way to ensure that students

incorporate their own interpretations into their

synthesis projects. Assignments must require that

students do more than cut and paste information and

call it a report. Designing instruction so that the

students are required to think about the ideas and

information they read is fundamental. Involving

students in asking authentic questions,analyzing

information and transforming it through synthesis

means expecting them to do more than regurgitate

facts. Loertscher (2004) stated is an exemplary

resource for guiding classroom collaboration to help

students achieve synthesis.

All of the print and electronic information

seeking skills can be teaching during instruction that

focus on synthesis. Resource location and skills and

using the text features of informational books are

tasks that may be required for students engaged in

learning this strategy. Teaching students how to

evaluate resources, for authority, accuracy and

currently is easily integrate into synthesis lesson. For

students, practicing synthesis requires them to

master a valuable set of subskills and strategies, may

of which can be teach most effictively .

When choosing text for the purpose of

synthesizing ideas and information, educators can

provide students with carefully selected text sets of

resources at various reading levels, in multiple

genres, and in a variety of formats, including

websites and other technology sources. One educator

may be particularly knowledge able in the area of

print resources, the other may be savvy about

websites. One may be more familiar with fiction

titles, the other may be more versed in informational

sources. Together, educators can develop engaging

text sets for students explorations.

Ultimately, educators must give students the

responsibility to develop their own text sets on a

particular topic or theme. By collecting and

evaluating resources, students can demonstrate what

have learn about strengths of various genres in

supporting research and inquiry projects. They can

assess the works of favorite authors, illustrators, and

web based resources for their usefulness in

achieving their learning objectives. After classroom

lecturer have modeled collecting and using text sets,

students are ready to assume responsibility for this

aspect of the research process, and educator can

serve in an advisory role. By guiding students

through the information literacy process and reuiring

their own interpretations of the ideas and

information they read and view, educators can help

students develop the critical-thinking skills they

need to negotiate the challenges of the future.

This strategy overcome students difficulties in

getting some interesting message or information of

reading text and also give the teacher easily to

prepare the material and comprehensive in their

teaching reading comprehension.

Therefore, there are some purposes of

Synthesizing Strategy such as the students can uses

their prior knowledge or their experience in class

and they can improve their knowledge from other

source such as library and web source and they can

make one main idea base on their prior knowledge.

Through these purpose, so the students get some

benefits from this strategies. They are interactive

and engaging, involved task that challenges students

thinking, requires students to think on their own,

active involvement in lessons, focus their attention

for better comprehension, and better copperative

with other students.

2 RESEARCH DESIGN

The research design of this research was

experimental quantitative research. Experiments

carry out with a view to see the result of a treatment.

If the writer uses this research design, it means that

there was two group or two classes that used in this

research as the samples. The first was experimental

class and the second was control class. The

experimental class was a class or a group which

receive the treatment by using Synthesizing

Strategy.

The data of the research is a test as the

instrument. The form of the test is Reading test. The

data was collected by conducting the pre-test and the

post-test to both the classes; they were the

experimental class and the control class. Pre-test is a

test which is doing before conducting the treatment.

While the post test, is a test which is doing after

The Effect of Synthesizing Strategy on Students’ Reading Comprehension on Tourism at the English Class of Economic Students

403

conducting that treatment. Both of the groups got the

same test either in the pre-test or in the post-test. The

writer asked the students to write a main idea of the

story by using their prior knowledge and web source

and liblary source.

In getting the data, there are three procedures

which was taken by the writer, they were pre-test,

treatment, and post-test

2.1 The Treatment for Experimental

Group

Table 2: The Treatment for Experimental Group.

Teachers activities Students activities

Step 1: Motivation

and development

of background:

The teacher greets and

after that devides the

students into groups and

asked them to sit based on

their group

Step 2: Synthesizing

Strategy:

a.the teacher teaches the

students to understand the

content of the text by

applying the synthesizing

strategy to them

b.Teacher asked the

students to read aload the

reading text

Stept: 3. Strategy or

skill building activities:

a. the teacher asked the

students to discuss the

text together

b. the teacher ask the

students to come to front

of class and asked them to

tell what the story talk

about with their own word

c. teacher asked them to

add their explanation by

using source like :

background

knowledge,web source

and liblary source

Step:4.Follow-up

practice:

. teacher asked the

students to come to front

Students sit based on their

group

Students pay attention to

the teacher explanation

and get involved it

Students read the text

Students make a

discussion

Students tell what the

story talk about

Students make

interpretation

Students come to front

and tell the story

POST-TEST:

Teacher give test to the

students.

and tell the story again

with one of the source

POST-TEST:

Teacher give test to

the students.

3 DATA ANALYSIS

After knowing the score of experimental and control

groups in pre-test and post-test, the data were

analyzed. The total score of pre-test and post-test

can be seen below.

Students’

Initial

Pre-

Test

(T1)

Post-

Test

(T2)

Devi

ation

(d)

Devi

ation Squ

ared

(

d²

)

1 AP 54 82 28 784

2 AJPP 46 52 6 36

3 ACS 48 66 18 324

4 AH 60 80 20 400

5 BENS 58 60 2 4

6 BMN 52 68 16 256

7 CWSP 54 64 10 100

8 DMN 60 80 20 400

9 DWT 62 68 6 36

10 FDTR 60 72 12 144

11 FLD 50 74 24 576

12 GMS 52 54 2 4

13 HIS 52 56 4 16

14 IAP 62 80 18 324

15 JMS 60 66 6 36

16 KNES 52 78 26 676

17 LTFS 40 46 6 36

18 LS 60 66 6 36

19 LMTN 48 60 12 144

20 LS 66 82 16 256

21 LSS 44 64 20 400

22 LN 54 72 18 324

23 LPP 68 84 16 256

24 MJN 50 52 2 4

25 MBAP 48 72 24 576

26 MMN 44 70 26 676

27 MGG 62 89 27 729

28 NMS 52 64 12 144

29 RMT 64 88 24 576

30 RAS 62 64 2 2

31 SAS 52 62 10 100

32 SS 62 66 4 16

33 UMWS 54 56 2 4

34 WHPS 62 76 14 196

35 YG 50 68 18 324

36 YYN 54 60 6 36

37 YS 62 72 10 100

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404

38 YM 40 54 14 196

Total 2082 2585 507 9247

Mean 54,79 68,02 13,34

1) The mean score of experimental group

MX =

MX =13.34

2) Standart Deviation

dX=

dX² = 9247 -

dX = 9247 –

dX = 9247 – 6764.4

dx = 2482.6

The table shows that the significant improvement

of students’ score in the pre-test and post-test of the

experimental group. The max score of the

experimental group in pre-test is 68; while the min

score is 40. After giving treatment, the max score of

experimental group in post test is 89; while the min

score is 46.

Stu

dents’

Initial

Pre-

Test

(T1)

Post-

Test

(T2)

Devi

ation

(d)

Devi

Ation

Squ

ared

(

d²

)

1 AGIS 34 46 12 144

2 ABS 36 56 20 400

3 AOT 34 56 22 484

4 AMP 26 44 18 324

5 BGSP 30 46 16 256

6 CEH 40 62 22 484

7 DLS 54 72 18 324

8 DNS 36 46 10 100

9 DABB 44 64 20 400

10 DASS 56 72 16 256

11 DT 44 58 14 196

12 DAYT 44 62 18 324

13 DG 24 38 14 196

14 DA 64 78 14 196

15 EFS 32 54 22 484

16 FNSS 36 56 20 400

17 FNS 18 30 12 144

18 FSS 44 62 18 324

19 GN 28 48 20 400

20 IS 62 86 24 576

21 IBS 38 56 18 324

22 JRL 52 62 10 100

23 JPS 40 54 14 196

24 JSS 44 66 22 484

25 JSCT 36 62 26 678

26 JHS 40 60 20 400

27 KN 32 46 14 196

28 MHS 48 66 18 324

29 LS 52 80 28 784

30 PAS 40 20 20 400

31 REGL 24 40 16 256

32 RS 66 82 16 256

33 RSHS 26 40 14 196

34 REN 58 76 18 324

35 RS 46 70 24 576

36 SS 46 66 22 484

37 W

46 70 24 576

38 YJAB 16 22 6 36

Total 1536 2174 680 13,002

Mean 40,42 57,21 7,89

3) The mean score of experimental group

MY =

MY= 7.89

5) Standart Deviation

dY=

dY² = 13002 -

dY = 13002 -

dY = 13002– 12168.4

dY = 833.6

Table 2 presents the students’ score in pre-test

and post-test of the control group. The max score in

pre-test is 64; while the min score is 18. The max

score in post test is 86; while the min score is 20. It

means that the students in experimental group had

higher score than those the students in control group

after giving the treatment.

Notes:

MX = The mean of experimental group

MY = The mean score of control group

dX² = The sum squared of standard deviation of

experimental group

dY² = The squared of standard deviation of

control group.

3.1 Validity of the Test

The test is valid if it measures what is supposed to e

measured (Heaton, 1990). The study concerns with

how well the test measures the subject matter and

learning outcomes covered during the treatment.

There are some various types of validity, namely

content-validity and criterion-related validity. The

validity that was used in this study is content

The Effect of Synthesizing Strategy on Students’ Reading Comprehension on Tourism at the English Class of Economic Students

405

validity. A test will be said to have a good content

validity if every item in the test represents the

content material that supposed to be mastered

proportionally.

3.2 Reliability of The Test

Reliability is one of characteristic of a good test. In

this study, the data were obtained from try out that

was given before doing the result. In this study the

reliability of the test was calculated by using Kuder-

Richardson Formula (KR21) and the formula is :

]

Before calculate the reability of the test, it must

be determined the value of the mean and standart

deviation of try out first. The calculation of the mean

and standard deviation can be seen in the following:

6) The mean score of try out class

M =

M = 20.89

The mean of try out class is 29,23 it is considered

high.

7) Standart Deviation

Vt =

Vt=

Vt= 0.80

After the mean and deviation was obtained, the

writer calculated the reliability of the test is used.

The purpose of the researcher calculate the value of

reliability was that the researcher knew the

consitency of the test high or not. The calculation of

the reliability of the test can be seen in the

following:

]

Notes:

K = The number of test item

M = Mean of the score

Vt = Standard deviation of the score

The calculation shows that the reliability of the

test is 0.88. It means that the test is reliable because

the test has high correlation coefficient. According

to Arikunto’s statment the reliability of the test can

be categorized as follows:

0.00 – 0.20 = the reliability is very low.

0.21 – 0.40 = the reliability is low.

0.41 – 0.60 = the reliability is fair.

0.61 – 0.80 = the reliability is high.

0.80 – above = the reliability is very high.

3.3 Testing Hypothesis

T-test formula was used to calculate the differences

of the mean score in pre-test and post-test of both

experimental and control group in order to find t-

observed.

The calculation of t-test is follows

t =

t = 3.65

From the calculation, it is found that t-observed

is 3.65 is higher than t-table is 1.67.

3.4 Research Finding

For the effect size of the treatment the writer would

be described the finding of the Effect size of the

treatment in order to know how significant

From all the calculation of data which have been

analyzed, the researcher found that there was affect

of using Synthesizing Strategy on the students’

reading comprehension. It was proven by the

calculation of the data obtained from the score of

experimental group and score of control group by

ICNRSD 2018 - International Conference on Natural Resources and Sustainable Development

406

applying t-test formula. The result of the calculation

of t-test presents that t-observed

level of

significance (p) 0.05 of two-tailed test and degree of

freedom (df) = Nx + Ny-2 = 38 + 38 -2 = 74. If t-

observed is higher than t-table, it indicates that

Synthesizing Strategy gave significant effect to the

students’ reading comprehension.

The students who were taught by using

Synthesizing Strategy got the higher score than those

who taught without using Synthesizing Strategy.

“Teaching reading comprehension on Tourism

through Synthesizing Strategy to Economic students

is more affective and it is accepted. While teaching

reading comprehension on Tourism without

Synthesizing Strategy to the MA1 of Economic as

the control class is not affective and rejected. The

writer also explained the Synthesizing Strategy and

gave the example of narrative text on Tourism.

Then, the students read the text and found the main

Idea of the text. The next, the writer prepared

Synthesizing Strategy text to the students. The writer

distributed the material to each student and the

students were asked to learn it together with their

group.

In this research, the writer found the factors that

caused and affected the results which are: The first

Synthesizing Strategy could help the students to

comprehend Tourism text easily, The second during

the treatment, the students were enthusiastic and

more interested in learning to get the information

from the texts, and the third the students had

knowledge about how to make a sentence be their

product because in synthesing they would work

together to find out the information from the text and

arranged the information in several source such as

web source, background of knowledge and library

source

4 CONCLUSIONS

After doing the research and analyzing data, the

writer concluded that:

1. Synthesizing Strategy is one of Strategy in

teaching reading comprehension in narrative text.

Teaching the students how to comprehend

narrative Tourism text by using Synthesizing

Strategy shows the better result than not using

Synthesizing Strategy.

2. The mean of post-test of experimental group is

68.02 and the mean of post-test of control group

is 57.21 showed that the mean of experimental

group is higher than control group. This is

supported by the result of data analysis in which

t-observed (3.65) is higher than t-table (1.68) at

the level 0.05 level of significance.

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