The development of reading comprehension for 7th-grade students by using Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DR-TA)

Abstract

The purposes of this research were: 1) to examine the efficiency of the instructional packages using Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DR-TA) for 7^th grade-students, and 2) to compare students’ achievement after using Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DR-TA) through pre-test and post-test. The sample was selected from a purposive sampling of 40 7^th grade-students from Phothawattanasenee School in the academic year 2018. The instruments of this study were 1) five 100-minute lesson plans using Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DR-TA), 2) the five sets of instructional packages of reading comprehension; each set consists of an English passage, an exercise, and a reading comprehension test, and 3) a reading comprehension pretest and posttest. The statistics used to analyze the data were arithmetic mean (), percentage, standard deviation (S.D.), percentage, and dependent t-test. The results of the study were as follows;

1. The efficacy value of using the instructional packages based on Directed Reading- Thinking Activity (DR-TA) method for 7^th-grade students was defined as 83/84 efficiency that was higher the expected standard of 80/80.

2. The result of students’ achievement by using Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DR-TA) for 7^th-grade students through the post-test scores was higher than pre-test scores at .01 level of significant.

The conclusion of this study reveals that using Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DR-TA), through the instructional packages, were quite useful for students’ reading comprehension skill. Students also learn and practice how to develop their reading skill by using the instructional packages with DR-TA. Furthermore, the teaching of reading with DR-TA can improve students’ reading comprehension skill. Students were motivated to read more English texts.