The contribution of discourse strategies to the reading comprehension skills in senior high school level

This study aimed at obtaining accurate information related to (a) discourse strategies used by grade 11 students in reading comprehension skills and (b) the contribution of these discourse strategies to the reading comprehension skill of grade 11 students. In this study, the researchers applied a quantitative approach with a case study method towards grade 11 students of SMA KatolikSanto Thomas 1, Medan, Indonesia, totaling 72 people. Questionnaires are used to obtain discourse strategy data and are analyzed by calculating the percentage. Meanwhile, the test instrument was used to collect information on reading comprehension skills and analyse it by compute the proper answers. After that, to find out the influence of discourse strategies on students’ reading comprehension skills, the researchers applied the simple linear regression analysis.
Based on data analysis, we obtained information that 97.22% of students used the interaction strategy, 93.06% used the cultural strategy, 91.67% used the semantic strategy, 90.28% used the social strategy, 86.11% used the pragmatic strategy, 84.72% used the stylistic/rhetoric strategy, and 83.3% used the schematic strategy. Furthermore, the results of hypothesis testing indicated that discourse strategies had a significant and positive contribution to the reading comprehension skill of grade 11 students.
From the findings of this study, it can be concluded that when carrying out reading comprehension activities, each reader uses various strategies. Therefore, to improve students’ reading comprehension skills, teachers need to train students with various reading comprehension techniques. One of them is the discourse strategies.