Improving Students’ Reading Comprehension Using Skimming Technique in Descriptive Text: A Case Study At SMAN 1 Pakue

Reading ability is needed by the students for facing both semester and national tests of English tested in reading form. So that to answer the question appropriately and quickly, it is really need a strategy. One of very useful strategy is skimming technique. The aims of this research (1) to examine the improvement of students’ reading comprehension after being taught through skimming technique in descriptive text and (2) to find out the effect of skimming techniques in improving students’ reading comprehension.
This research uses a quantitative method based on the experimental class by one group pretest-posttest design to collect data. There were 23 students of X IPA 6 at SMAN 1 Pakue as the sample for this research. The research results show that skimming technique is very helpful in improving students' reading comprehension at SMAN 1 Pakue. The results are proven quantitatively by the score post-test is highest than pre-test (68.5 > 33.9) and the percentage of the students' scores shows significant improvement from pre-test (29.3%) to post -test (59.3%). On the effectiveness, the skimming technique really has a positive effect on improving students' reading comprehension. In which, the classification of student scores improved greatly after the skimming technique was taught.