THE EFFECTIVENESS OF USING SELF MONITORING APPROACH TO READING AND THINKING (SMART) STRATEGY IN READING COMPREHENSION OF THE SECOND GRADE STUDENTS OF SMP NEGERI 8 LANGSA

This research was a quasi experimental research which took place in SMP Negeri 8 Langsa with the total number of population was 117 students and 56 of them were the sample from experimental class and controlled class. This research used pretest and posttest to collect the data. It also used some statistical formulas to analyze the data. It was found that there is a difference in the students’ achievement in reading comprehension between students taught Self Monitoring Approach Reading to Thinking (SMART) strategy and those without using Self Monitoring Approach Reading to Thinking (SMART) strategy. The result of the experimental group is 80.96 and the control group is 65.54 Self Monitoring Approach Reading to Thinking (SMART) strategy has many advantages in teaching reading comprehension. It makes the students more interesting and enjoying the lesson because it is supported by situation. Learning using Self Monitoring Approach Reading to Thinking (SMART) strategy that is accompanied as the background can stimulate, refresh, and support learning.


INTRODUCTION
Reading is about understanding written texts. It is a complex activity related processes: word recognition and comprehension. Word recognition refers to the process of perceiving how written symbols correspond to one"s spoken language. Meanwhile, comprehension is the process of making sense words, sentences and connected texts. Reading comprehension as an active process a reader made to construct meaning from a text. This process which consists of using an interaction between a prior knowledge, and drawing inferences from the different words and expressions the writer uses, in order to comprehend information, ideas and viewpoints. Reading comprehension skill shows the ability of someone when they understand the meaning of the text.
Ideally, the second grade students of SMP Negeri 8 Langsa should be able to comprehend a text well because the teacher had used a good technique in teaching reading. In fact, the teacher still finds that many students have problem in comprehending the text, especially in narrative text. Some difficulties faced by students studying English are: (1) the students lack of vocabulary. It influences when the students reading the text, they will feel difficult to understand the text. (2) The student is difficult to understand the meaning of the text given by the teacher. Usually, they need teacher"s help to read the word by word or sentence by sentence. (3) The students do not have good motivation to read because the text is not interesting and the students feel that reading activity is boring. So, the students become passive and lazy to read exactly to read book.
Based on the problems above, to make reading class an enjoyable and useful activity is a very important part of the language experience. Teachers should be aware of the strategy to the teaching of reading in order to make the students being active and understanding in reading text. Here, the researcher used Self Monitoring Approach to Reading and Thinking (SMART) strategy to solve the problem in teaching reading. Then, the writer follow students criteria standard minimum in English lesson was 75. If the students get score of KKM, smart strategy can improve students reading comprehension.
According to Buehl (2003), Self Monitoring Approach to Reading and Thinking strategy is a strategy in teaching reading that helps students to get idea based on the premise that successful reading begins with recognizing what is understood and not understood in a passage. So, Self Monitoring Approach to Reading and Thinking is based on the idea that effective reading starts with recognizing what is understood and not understood in a particular text.
Based on the background above, the writers is interested in conducting a study entitled "The Effectiveness of Using Self Monitoring Approach to Reading and Thinking (SMART) Strategy in Reading Comprehension of the Second Grade Students of SMP Negeri 8 Langsa".

Definition of Reading Comprehension
In the daily life, reading skills play an important role in facilitating people to comprehend the written materials. They can get a lot of information from various resources in order to enrich their knowledge by reading. Unfortunately the people find many problems in reading.
According to Nuttal (2000), reading means a result of interaction between the writer"s mind and the reader"s mind. It is the way how to the reader tries to get the message or the intended meaning from the writer. In this process, the reader tries to create the meanings intended by the writer, the reader can get the message, and the writer"s meaning sense. Reading is an important skill which has an important contribution to the success of learning language. Reading comprehension is the process of making meaning from text. The goal, therefore, is to gain an overall understanding of what is described in the text rather than to obtain meaning from isolated words or sentences.
Meanwhile, according to Brown (2001), reading comprehension is the process of constructing meaning by coordinating a number of complex processes that included word reading, word and world knowledge, and fluency. It refers to the ability in interpreting the words, to understand the meaning and the relationships between ideas conveyed in a text. He summarized reading comprehension instruction for the teacher as following a three-step procedure: mentioning, practicing, and assessing. That is, teacher will mention the skills that the students want to use, then they will give them opportunities to practice those skills through workbooks or work sheets, and finally assess whether or not they use the skill successfully.
Based on the definitions above, reading comprehension is the ability to take information from written text and do something with it in a way that demonstrates knowledge or understanding of that information. Ross and Roe (2006) say that the use of strategies in reading requires the reader to think about how to approach the text in order to decode and retain information. In this definition, strategies are ways for learners to solve problems encountered in constructing meaning in any context. Strategies chosen by learners are modified to fit the demands of the learning situation. The strategies used by the students must be different from one another.

Reading Comprehension Strategies
There are some strategies in reading comprehension.
a. Identifying the purpose in reading Efficient reading consists of clearly identifying the purpose in reading a text. By identifying the purpose in reading before reading a text, the readers know what they are looking for and can weed out potential distracting information (Brown, 2001 This strategy leads the students to try inferring meaning from context. It is also the best practices to make the students become efficient readers c. Skimming and scanning the text Brown (2001) also says that skimming is a reading strategy in which the readers quickly run their eyes across a whole text. By skimming the text, the reader will be able to predict the purpose of the passage, the main topic, or message, and the supporting ideas. Scanning is quickly searching for some particular piece or pieces of information in a text. The purpose of scanning is to extract specific information without reading through the whole text. The reader can use this strategy to look for the detail information in the text such as looking for the names or dates, finding the definition of a key concept, and listing a certain number of supporting details.

d. Guessing
In this strategy, the students try to guess the meaning of the words when they are not certain or they do not know the meanings of the words, a grammatical relationship, a discourse relationship, a cultural reference, content messages, and infer implied meanings.

Definition of SMART Strategy
The most important thing in teaching reading is how to make our learners to be proficient and autonomous readers. By doing this, they will be used to fight with plenty of texts. Buehl (2001) explains that proficient readers carry on an internal monologue while they read. It is as though proficient readers operate with a split personality. One personality is hard at work with the task at hand, This is the personality concerned with cognitive activities such as selecting what"s important in that chapter, organizing this information in conjunction with what is already known, and preparing to answer a series of questions on the material. But it is a second personality that separates effective from less effective readers. This second personality works in the background, directing and evaluating all those cognitive activities needed to successfully learn.
Researchers call this internal monologue metacognition--the ability to think about your thinking. Metacognition involves a self-awareness of what one is doing and how it is going. It also reflects an ability to switch gears and try something else when things break down, such as when a reading passage is proving particularly difficult. Ineffective readers approach print passively and continue to plow ahead, even if nothing is making sense. But effective readers can also be taught how to activate the control center in their minds that directs their learning. Buehl (2001) then claims that SMART strategy is one strategy that triggers students to think about how their reading is proceeding. SMART is based on the premise that successful reading begins with recognizing what is understood and not understood in a passage. So, the use of this strategy is supposed to be able to make our learners comprehend reading passages better. SMART can solve the English and students" problem in reading comprehension.

Steps of SMART Strategy
Buehl (2001) describes how to apply SMART strategy that involves the following steps: (1) select a passage of four or five paragraphs that you find personally challenging and ask students to follow along as you think aloud about your reading; (2) after reading the entire passage, model to students how to paraphrase material in words that make sense to them, (3) introduce the SMART protocol to students; and (4) have students read a passage on their own using the check mark and question mark system.
Practically, the above steps can be elaborated as follows: a.
Step 1: Do I understand?
Place a check (√) in the margin of the text or on a sticky note when you understand and a question mark (?) when you have a question. b.
Step 2: What have I just read?
At the end of each paragraph, stop and summarize in your own words what you just read (look back at text if necessary). c.
Step 3: Does it make sense now?
After reading the whole text, return to each paragraph that has a question mark and reread. If it still doesn"t make sense, move to step d.
Step 4: Why am I having trouble?
Try to pinpoint the problem. Is it unfamiliar words?
Concepts? Is the sentence structure too complex? Do you have little Try a variety of aids: glossary, appendix, dictionary, chapter summary… If you are still confused, ask a classmate or teacher.

Model of Teaching Procedure
Some stages of teaching procedure or SMART strategy implementation are described as follows. In line with the description above, Crilly (2002) says that self monitoring approach to reading and thinking strategy is a strategy helps students to think about how their reading is proceeding. It assists students in knowing what sorts of questions they need to ask themselves during the reading of a text to gain meaning. Hence, Self Monitoring Approach to Reading and Thinking strategy is a strategy used to assess deep understanding of students through questioning and also analyze of the problem to get the main idea about the problem.
Emphasize that before asking for help, students should be able to (1) specifies the source of their problem (an unfamiliar word, an unclear sentence, a need for more examples, etc.) And (2) explain how they tried to solve their problem.
In addition, there are some researches had been conducted similar to this one. One of them is from Zahro. She conducted a research entitled The and posttest was a pre-experimental research. She found that the mean of students" score of pre-test before they were taught by using SMART strategy to increse reading comprehension was (56,13) while the mean of students score after being taught by using SMART strategy was (77,25). The significant value was 0.00 and the significant level was 0.05. It meant that the significant value was smaller than significant level (0.00 < 0.05). So, the alternative hypothesis (Ha) was accepted and null hypothesis (Ho) was rejected. The alternative hypothesis (Ha) was accepted and the null hypothesis (Ho) was rejected which stated that there was any significant different in using SMART strategy to increase reading comprehension at the first grade of Mts Ma"arif Bakung Udanawu Blitar. So, the strategy improved the students" ability (Zahro, 2019).
Different to the previous research, this is a quasi experimental research although they still have the similarity which is focused on the use of SMART strategy in improving students" ability in reading comprehension.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This research was conducted at SMPN 8 Langsa. The method used in this paper is the quasi experimental. According Latipun (2002), an experimental method of research conducted the manipulation aims to determine the result of manipulation of individual behavior observed. Then, in the quasi experimental research the writer do the research by observing students improving in reading comprehension by using experimental research. In this study as the population is all students at the second grade JL3T Journal of Linguistics, Literature & Language Teaching students of SMPN 8 Langsa as 117 students. How to sampling in this study is done by selecting 2 classes in class VIII. The two classes were made details, for class VIII.A designated as control class, while the class VIII.B is set as the experimental class as 56 students in two classes. Experimental class is the class that learning using smart strategy. Meanwhile, the control class is the class that learning using the usual learning method.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
In this research the researcher found that the result of pre-test and post test in experimental class and controlled class. Pre test were given to both of control and experiment class, in order to measure how the students ability of two classes before treatment. In the pre test, the researchers give students test to know students understanding about reading comprehension.
After did the pre test, the researcher conducted treatment in experimental class. The researcher implemented Self Monitoring Approach to reading and Thinking (SMART) strategy. Besides, in control class the researcher not used treatment. Then, the result of data analysis, both data calculation and raw scores, can be described in the following table:  Based on the table above, the mean of students" score in the pretest was 56.46 with the lowest score, 36, and the highest score, 77. Meanwhile the mean score of posttest was 65.54 with the lowest score, 43, and the highest score, 82. It means that control class without treatment more lowest score than experimental class with used treatment.
The data of students" score was analyzed by using t-test to prove whether there was any significant different between students" ability in writing the experimental class as the X variable and controlled class as the Y variable. But, before using the formula of t-test, the students" score in the experimental and controlled class were tabulated to calculate the gained score of each class. It could be seen as follows:  According the data in the table above, the result of students" pretest and posttest further in each class was calculated by using t-test in some steps as follows: 1. Determining mean of variable X, with formula as follows:  The research focused on improving the students" comprehension using Self Monitoring Approach Reading to Thinking (SMART) strategy. There were some steps for implementing the strategy in the research. They were building interest and attention, accessing knowledge and exploring their idea, building connection between students" prior knowledge and the new material, and comprehending the new material. This strategy was implemented both in experimental class a. The findings of the research in experimental class showed that Self Monitoring Approach Reading to Thinking (SMART) strategy was successful in improving the students" reading comprehension. The discussion of the findings was written as the following. In the first step of Self Monitoring Approach Reading to Thinking (SMART) strategy building interest and attention, the researcher used pictures as the media, and familiar topics. Furthermore, the use of familiar topic in each meeting was also successful in attracting the students toward the lesson.
The next step was accessing prior knowledge and exploring key words. Pictures were still used as the media. The researcher showed the picture and asked some questions related to the picture. Questioning and answering session about the material was effective to recall the students" comprehension toward the topic. The students were asked to read and mention words related to the material or topic. This was successful in helping the students to explore their vocabulary related to the topic.
The third step was connection between the students"understanding and the next material. In this step, to make the students have awareness about the importance of relating to the new material, the researcher asked the students predict the text by looking at the title of the text related to the text.
The activity was successful in making the students to use their comprehensions in order to predict the content of the text.
The last step was comprehension the new material. During the process of reading, the students read the text and connected it with their students understanding. They were asked to find the new information got from their reading such as difficult words. In this step, the students were  The aim of this test is to know the students" achievement in reading comprehension through the use of Self Monitoring Approach Reading to Thinking (SMART) strategy in teaching reading English in the eighth grade students of SMPN 8 Langsa. The result of the experiment group is higher than that of the control group. The testing hypothesis indicates that the experimental group is significant higher than that of the control group. Based on the result above, the researchers conclude that the experimental group is better than the control group. The research finding reveals that Self Monitoring Approach Reading to Thinking (SMART) strategy can be used as an alternative strategy for teaching reading comprehension.
In this research, the researcher used Dough Buehl (2001) as a theory in SMART strategy. The theory specific about the reader carry on an internal monologue while they read. The researchers make this the main theory about smart strategy because the most important thing for a reader is to generally know the important components in reading. This is the personality concerned with cognitive activities such as selecting what"s important in that chapter, organizing this information in conjunction with what is already known, and preparing to answer a series of questions on the material. But it is a second personality that separates effective from less effective readers.

CONCLUSION
The result of the study shows that after the treatment, there is a difference in the students" achievement in reading comprehension between students taught Self Monitoring Approach Reading to Thinking (SMART) strategy and those without using Self Monitoring Approach Reading to Thinking (SMART) strategy. The two groups are at the same level.
Meanwhile, the final result shows that the students get better if they are taught schema activation strategy rather than those without. The result of the experimental group is 80.96 and the control group is 65.54 Self Monitoring Approach Reading to Thinking (SMART) strategy has many advantages in teaching reading comprehension. It makes the students more increasing and enjoy the lesson because it is supported by situation. Learning using Self