TEACHERS’ STRATEGIES IN TEACHING READING COMPREHENSION AT SENIOR HIGH SCHOOLS

important


INTRODUCTION
Reading is regarded as the most crucial skill for English language learners, especially for students who learn English in non-English speaking countries.Sarjan and Mardiana (2017) state that reading is an activity to get specific information that someone needs.Also, it can be defined as an activity to get information from a written text.Through this activity, students will get much information and many ideas they need to know to improve their knowledge and reading comprehension ability.
Talking about reading, it must include comprehension.Comprehension is a parameter of reading.Reading comprehension is the ability to process a text, make sense of it, and integrate it with what the reader already knows.Snow (2002) stated that reading comprehension can be understood as the process of extracting meaning carried out by readers simultaneously through interaction and attachment to the written language in terms of text genres.Reading comprehension does not focus on students' pronunciation, but it focuses on understanding the main idea and related details.It means that students have to fully understand what is being read.EFL teachers usually measure the student's reading comprehension by asking students to answer some questions about the text.However, there are many ways to measure comprehension, instead of answering questions.Students may have different reading comprehension levels depending on their background knowledge about the topic, vocabulary, and language skills.Reading strategy is an important role in teaching reading comprehension to achieve the goals of reading.The teacher must choose a strategy that supports the development of students' skills in analyzing the content of the text.The objectives of this research were to investigate EFL teachers' strategies in teaching reading comprehension and the most frequent one applied by them.The subjects of this research consisted of 30 EFL teachers.This research was a survey design that used a quantitative approach.The instrument was a questionnaire using Vacca and Vacca's theory and it was administrated to the respondents through Google Forms.The data were analyzed quantitatively using the Microsoft Excel software.The results of the research showed that the EFL teachers applied five strategies in teaching reading comprehension at Senior High Schools in Bengkulu City, namely the SQ3R, Reciprocal Teaching, Think-Aloud, QARs, and Scaffolding strategies.The most frequent strategy applied by them was the SQ3R which was as always category while other strategies were as often category.In conclusion, EFL teachers have applied various strategies in teaching reading comprehension at Senior High Schools.This research recommended that EFL teachers to apply all strategies in teaching reading comprehension.APA 7 th Citation: Junita, T., Mukhrizal, Elfrida. (2023).Teachers' Strategies in Teaching Reading Comprehension at Senior High method and the studies were conducted at one school only.Moreover, these studies used interviews, observation checklists, documentation, and open-ended questionnaire to collect the data.The results showed that teachers tended to use scaffolding, SQ3R, QAR, and semantic mapping in teaching reading comprehension.The other strategies used by them included reviewing, discussion, resuming, reading aloud, asking for specific information, reciprocal, text-based instruction, exercises, and translating strategies.
Based on the problems and the previous studies as stated above, there is a still gap regarding this issue.This issue still needed to be investigated by employing a different research method, instrument, and the number of samples.It aimed to strengthen the research results regarding reading strategies used by EFL teachers and add new insights regarding teachers' ability in teaching reading, and the situation and condition of teaching reading skills at schools.Therefore, this present research investigated teachers' strategies in teaching reading were investigated using Vacca and Vacca's (1999) theory.The problems are formulated in the following research questions; 1. What strategies are applied by EFL teachers in teaching reading comprehension at Senior High Schools? 2. What is the most frequent strategy applied by them in teaching reading comprehension at Senior High Schools?

Participants
This research used a quantitative method with a survey design that involved 30 EFL Senior High Schools in Bengkulu City.Creswell (2012) states that the survey design is a type of research that administered a survey or questionnaire to a small group of people (sample) to identify trends in attitudes, opinions, behaviors, or characteristics of a large group of people (population).The EFL teachers were taken based on the volunteer sampling technique.

Instruments
The data of this research were collected using a questionnaire adopted from by Ligudon and Ilodefonso (2022) and it was under the theory of Vacca and Vacca (1999).The questions were classified into five main categories (Scaffolding, Think-Aloud, Reciprocal Teaching, SQ3R, and QARs strategies).The questionnaire used a Likert Scale that consisted of four options, namely; Always, Often, Seldom, and Never.The questions consisted of 30 in which each strategy consisted of 6 questions.The questionnaire was administrated through Google Forms.As presented in Table 4, four of six items were responded by teachers as always category while two items were often applied by them in teaching reading comprehension.

The Reciprocal Teaching Strategy
The reciprocal teaching strategy was the second strategy applied by EFL teachers in teaching reading comprehension.This strategy consisted of six items.The results of the teachers' responses to these items are presented in the following table;  As presented in Table 5, four items were responded by teachers as always category in teaching reading comprehension, namely items 24, 25, 14, and 15 while other items 17 and 18 were in an often category.
The Think-Aloud Strategy The Think-Aloud strategy was the third strategy applied by EFL teachers in teaching reading comprehension.This strategy consisted of six items.The results of the teachers' responses to these items are presented in the following table;  As presented in Table 8, three items were responded to by teachers as always category in teaching reading comprehension, namely items 5, 7, and 2 while three other items were in an often category.
The QARs Strategy The QARs strategy was the fourth strategy applied by EFL teachers in teaching reading comprehension.This strategy consisted of six items.The results of the teachers' responses to these items are presented in the following table;  As shown in Table 10, three items were responded by teachers as always category while other items were often category while three other items were in an often category.

The Scaffolding Strategy
The scaffolding strategy was the fifth strategy applied by EFL teachers in teaching reading comprehension.This strategy consisted of six items.The results of the teachers' responses to these items are presented in the following table;  As presented in Table 7, three items were answered by teachers as always category in teaching reading comprehension, namely items 1, 6, and 29 while three others were in an often category.As presented in Figure 1, there were five strategies of reading comprehension provided in the questionnaire of this research.All of these strategies were applied by them but the degree of use was quite different for each strategy.Among them, the most frequent strategy applied by EFL teachers was the SQ3R strategy.It was followed by the Reciprocal Teaching, Think-Aloud, QARs, and Scaffolding strategies.

DISCUSSION EFL Teachers' Strategies in Teaching Reading Comprehension at Senior High Schools in Bengkulu City
This question aimed to investigate the strategies applied by EFL teachers at Senior High Schools in Bengkulu City in teaching reading comprehension.The results showed that five strategies were applied by them in teaching reading comprehension, namely the SQ3R, Reciprocal Teaching, Think-Aloud, QARs, and Scaffolding strategies.These findings mean that the EFL teachers in Bengkulu at the Senior High School level applied many strategies in teaching reading comprehension to meet students' needs in understanding English texts.The results of this present research are quite different from the previous studies (e.g., Nur et al., 2023;Anjelita, 2022;Dwiningtiyas et al., 2022;Vendho, 2022;Sitimorang, 2022;Adawiah & Manurung, 2021;Nurdin, 2021;Nurdianingsih, 2021;Saputri et al., 2021;Pranata & Novita, 2021;Nurhayati, 2019;Ranggi, 2019).The previous studies found that teachers tended to use scaffolding, SQ3R, QARs, and semantic mapping in teaching reading comprehension.Meanwhile, in this present research teachers used five reading strategies as proposed by Vacca and Vacca (1999).Only three strategies are the same as the previous studies, namely scaffolding, SQ3R, and QARs.It might be influenced by different students' characteristics such as learning style, English ability, and reading skills.It was affirmed by Fitriana(2018), the use of reading strategy depends on the way students learn, their motivation, linguistics competence, interest, characteristic of the text and the last is the environmental role.Those factors influence a teacher in the use of reading strategies for their students during the teaching and learning process.In terms of the SQ3R strategy, the finding shows that EFL teachers always applied this strategy in teaching reading comprehension.This strategy is regarded as appropriate for students of Senior High Schools in Bengkulu because it uses some systematic stages which guide students to understand the text.This strategy is done by reading texts together with students and teachers or students and students (Suyatno, 2009).Therefore, this strategy is one of cooperative learning to make students active in the process of learning, particularly reading comprehension.
Teaching reading comprehension is likely good using the SQ3R strategy.The cooperative learning model in terms of the SQ3R aims to make readers active in the face and understand the reading texts and can find the main ideas and details important that support the main idea (Soedarso, 2010).This method allows the reader to capture other ideas that are implied in the texts.That's why this strategy is always used by teachers in Bengkulu at the Senior High School level.
In terms of the Reciprocal Teaching strategy, the finding shows that EFL teachers often used this strategy in teaching reading comprehension.It means that teachers have applied cognitive learning strategies in teaching reading comprehension.It could be seen that they always asked their students to make conclusions and summaries based on the text that they had read.It aims to train and increase students' critical thinking ability because it can increase students' motivation to read (Sundahry et al., 2019).These activities are part of the reciprocal teaching that is under the reciprocal teaching techniques that guide the discussion, such as predicting, question generating, summarizing, and clarifying.
There are some benefits of using the reciprocal teaching strategy in teaching reading comprehension.Setyawati and Fahri (2016) claim that students can solve the problems in the reading activities; students will be easily understood the information in a text through predicting stage.Furthermore, the reciprocal teaching strategy will help students to master many new vocabularies from the text that they read.The last, students can read and understand the texts in a group, a pair, or together because reciprocal teaching is a cooperative learning strategy.The emphasis is on students supporting each other's teaching, requiring collaboration and group thinking (McAllum, 2014).Thus, during the learning process, students will be enjoyed and motivated and feel cared for and valued In terms of the Think-Aloud strategy, this finding shows that there are transactional activities that happen during the teaching reading.In other words, there is a collaboration between the teacher and students to construct the meaning of the text so that instructions used in this strategy engage students in comprehending a text by associating their prior knowledge (McKeown & Gentilucci, 2007).Some possible reasons why the EFL teachers applied the think-aloud strategy at Senior High Schools in Bengkulu city.The "think aloud" strategy can help students learn to develop their thinking skills while reading, thereby increasing their reading comprehension.In addition, Sönmez and Sulak (2018) claim that the think-aloud helps teachers determine the level of students' reading ability and makes it easier for teachers to assess students.Moreover, using this strategy can help teachers identify individual students' reading comprehension problems and find ways to help them (Indriani, 2016).This strategy also increases students' interest in learning because they actively participate in these activities.Additionally, the Thinking Speech Strategy provided students with an opportunity to practice speaking their thoughts (Burhansyah et al., 2022).The aim is to find further information or conclusions not clearly stated in the text.
In terms of the QARs strategy, the finding shows that EFL teachers often apply this strategy in teaching reading comprehension.It could be seen that they often asked their students to discuss the answers to the questions together and created questions based on the information in the text.it is in line with this statement, the QAR strategy suggests students classify the questions by the source of their answers and the question could be literal and inferential (Moreillon, 2007).It shows that teachers have tried to encourage their students to monitor and assess their own thinking in understanding the text, elaborate and think critically, and refute students' perceptions (Conner, 2006;as cited in Nurhayati et al., 2018).So, in classroom practice, students only skim the text read, and for better understanding, students focus on questions posed by the teacher about the text read.
In terms of the Scaffolding strategy, the finding shows that EFL teachers often used it in teaching reading comprehension.It shows that students also still need the teacher's guidance in learning reading comprehension.Sarjan and Mardiana (2017) stated that scaffolding is a lesson in which students receive support in the early stages of learning, then reduce support and create opportunities for students.In this activity, students will be able to understand the text easily.It may be because the scaffolding strategy is good for students who have different problems and situations in learning reading to encourage creativity and help them be more creative (Narina, 2022).Thus, this strategy allows teachers to help diverse students understand the meaning and overcome difficulties in text-related learning situations.
Based on the finding, it means that the use of the QARs strategy gives many benefits to students.It has been proved by Nurhayati et al. (2018), The QAR strategy is effective in teaching reading and students have had positive feedback when it comes to teaching reading comprehension in a school in Banda Aceh.Thus, the QAR strategy focuses on question and answer and guides students to understand the questions to get a piece of information in the reading itself.
In conclusion, based on the results of the research, EFL teachers tended to apply the cooperative learning model in teaching reading comprehension.It may aim to encourage students' involvement and activity in understanding texts.Moreover, it may aim to increase students' critical thinking abilities.Prastyo (2014) argues that cooperative learning is an effective instructional methodology to support, and three main objectives of the 2013 Curriculum.It asks students to be active in learning.Thus, the reading strategies teachers use to teach reading comprehension which are under cooperative learning seem to work for high school students in Bengkulu.
The Most Frequent Strategy Applied by EFL Teachers in Teaching Reading Comprehension Based on the results of the analysis, EFL teachers frequently applied the SQ3R strategy in teaching reading at Senior High Schools in Bengkulu City.It seems that this strategy is suitable for students' characteristics and backgrounds in Bengkulu City.
The use of the SQ3R strategy as the most frequent one in teaching reading comprehension at Senior High Schools in Bengkulu might be influenced by some reasons.This strategy seems more efficient so that students can repeatedly study teaching materials from the stages of researching readings or teaching materials (Survey), asking questions (Question), reading, or studying (Read), telling or rewriting (Recite), and reviewing (Review).Moreover, this strategy has proved that the use of the SQ3R strategy could increase the activeness of the students and their learning outcomes in English lessons (Utama & Turdja'I, 2019).Thus, this SQ3R strategy gives many benefits for students in teaching reading comprehension and it has some stages that help students understand the text comprehensively.
Based on the results of the research, EFL teachers at Senior High Schools in Bengkulu City seem that they have been aware of their students' problems and need to facilitate them in learning reading comprehension.They have applied many strategies in teaching reading comprehension that aim to achieve the goals of teaching reading and to increase students' learning outcomes better.
Regarding the research that the researcher had done, some strengths and weaknesses were found.In terms of strengths, this present research has uncovered the use of strategy in teaching reading by teachers in Bengkulu at the Senior High School level with more samples compared to the previous studies.Meanwhile, the weaknesses are this present study did not provide interviews to investigate teachers' reasons for choosing those strategies in teaching comprehension.It still needs to know teachers' perceptions of the use of those strategies.Thus, the next researcher is suggested to fill the gaps in this present study.

CONCLUSIONS
This research has investigated EFL teachers' strategies in teaching reading comprehension at Senior High Schools in Bengkulu and the analysis data has been done by the researcher.Reading strategy is important to be applied by teachers to help students understand English texts well and to improve students' learning outcomes.Based on the findings, EFL teachers used all strategies in teaching reading comprehension based on the theory of Vacca and Vacca (1999) and they tended to use the SQ3R strategy.
Regarding the suggestion, the future researcher is suggested to conduct research by investigating EFL teachers' strategies in teaching reading comprehension at different types of schools such as Vocational Schools and Islamic Senior High Schools.In addition, the researcher should increase the number of samples to get comprehensive findings.
Notes: A = Always, O = Often, S = Seldom, and NV = Never, N = Number of respondents, f = frequency, and % = percentage Notes: A = Always, O = Often, S = Seldom, and NV = Never, N = Number of respondents, f = frequency, and % = percentage Always, O = Often, S = Seldom, and NV = Never, N = Number of respondents, f = frequency, and % = percentage Always, O = Often, S = Seldom, and NV = Never, N = Number of respondents, f = frequency, and % = percentage Always, O = Often, S = Seldom, and NV = Never, N = Number of respondents, f = frequency, and % = percentage

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.The Most Frequent Reading Strategy Applied by EFL Teachers

Table 1 .
The Interval Range of the Mean Score for the statement

Table 2 . The EFL Strategies in Teaching Reading Comprehension No Reading Comprehension Strategies Range Scale
As presented in Table6, three strategies were always applied by EFL teachers in teaching reading comprehension, namely the SQ3R (22.40%),ReciprocalTeaching (20.01%EFL teachers), and Think-Aloud (19.64%EFL teachers) strategies.Meanwhile, other strategies were in an often category.They were the QAR strategy with a percentage of 19.10%, followed by the Scaffolding strategy with a percentage of 18.85%.The detailed results are presented in the following sub-sections;The SQ3R Strategy The SQ3R strategy was the first strategy applied by EFL teachers in teaching reading comprehension.It was the most dominant strategy applied by them.This strategy consisted of six items.The results of the teachers' responses to these items are presented in the following table;

Table 4 .
The EFL Teachers' Responses to Reciprocal Teaching Strategy

Table 5 .
The EFL Teachers' Responses to Think-Aloud Strategy

Table 6 .
The EFL Teachers' Responses to QARs Strategy

Table 7 .
The EFL Teachers' Responses to Scaffolding Strategy Teachers' Strategies in Teaching Reading Comprehension at Senior High Schools Wacana: Jurnal Penelitian Bahasa, Sastra & Pengajaran, Vol 21 No 2: 2023 | 119 The Most Frequent Strategy Applied by EFL Teachers in Teaching Reading Comprehension at Senior High Schools in Bengkulu City This research question aimed to investigate the most frequent strategy applied by EFL teachers in teaching reading comprehension at Senior High Schools in Bengkulu City.This question was viewed from the highest mean score among all strategies.After analyzing data, the result is described in the following figure;