The Effect of Online Pre-reading Activities on Students’ Reading Comprehension withReading Proficiency Levels.

RINGKASAN Fahmi, Arfan. 2018. The Effect of Online Pre-reading Activities on Students’ Reading Comprehension withReading Proficiency Levels.Dissertation, EnglishLanguageTeaching Program, Doctorate Program, Universitas Negeri Malang, Promotor: (I) Prof. M. Adnan Latief, M.A., Ph.D., (II) Prof. Ali Saukah, M.A., Ph.D. (III) Prof. Dr. NurMukminatien, M.Pd Keywords: Online pre-reading activities, Blended learning, Reading comprehension, Reading Proficiency level Schema is the background knowledge on which the interpretation of a text depends.Schema is theorized to explain how readers use prior knowledge to comprehend and learn from a text. Schema activation is a process through various activities to stimulate readers’ background knowledge prior to read and understand a text. It is an essential stage in text comprehension Schema activation is conducted in pre-reading stage encorporating some activities such as watching short video and responding to the tasks like answering questions, matching some vocabularies or phrases uttered with their possible meaning, and completing the story line chart. With limited time in classroom meeting and the advance of information technology, a new way of conducting pre-reading activities is offered in this study; online pre-reading activities. Therefore, reading course in this study involves online and in-classroom activities. This format recently has been known as blended learning. The dominance of blended learning over online and face-to-face learning on improving language proficiency has been widely proved. In response to that, this study attempts to investigate the effects of online pre-reading activitiesintwo different blended learning formats; Format A with face-to-face learning in pre-reading and while-reading and asynchronous online learning in post-reading and Format B with face-to-face learning in while-reading and asynchronous online learning in pre-reading and post-reading on students’ reading comprehension with different reading proficiency levels. Adapted MOODLE learning management system is employed to facilitate the asynchronous online learning. The two formats were tried out in a pilot study for four months before the implementation and showed a significant difference regardless the reading proficiency levels, mid reading proficiency, and low reading proficiency, howeverit was not in high proficiency in t-test measurement using the reading section in ITP Assessment Series. The real experiment utilizing counterbalance design was conducted in two different universities for four months. It involves 1 class with 30 freshmen in UNAIR and 1 class with 28 freshmen in UNMUH Surabaya. Every participant received Format A and Format B in different order for six weeks each, The participants in UNAIR receievedFA then FB, while the participants in UNMUH Surabayareceived FB then FA. Mann Whitney test for diffrence was carried out to calculate the overall effects on reading comprehension in all levels as well as in each level to determine the interaction effects. Using Mann-Whitney test of difference, the results showed that the scores resulted from the participants learning in FA and in FBhad .000 significance level and 95.03 achieved confidence. It is also true with high reading proficiency level with .013 significance leveland 95.77 achieved confidence. Meanwhile, mid and lowreading proficiency level showed .000 significancelevel with; 95.17 achieved confidence and 000 significance level with 95.01 achieved confidence. The implication of the finding suggest that FB (median=54.00) is better implemented in intensive reading course than FA (mean=51.50) regardless the participants’ reading proficiency levels of the participants The finding of this study provides scientific significance on the effect of schema activation in different blended learning formats on the students’ reading comprehension andreading proficiency levels. Furthermore, this study tries to give meaningful insight both theoretically and practicallyon the area of schema activation inraeding instruction applying blended learning formats. There are a number of recommendations for the teachers and the future researchers. For the teachers, it is suggested to have more and various schema activation activities in reading instruction in the context of blended learning format forreading course comprising asynchronous online pre reading and post reading activities. However, some factors need careful account such as the students’ readiness and the internet connection. For future researchers, it is recommended the findings of this study be used to seek and design the detailed in pre, while and post reading activities to make the studentslerned in blended learning format. At last, future research studies can be directed to finding out the effect of various blended learning formats of various courses (content-based or skill-based) in language teaching studies across proficiency levels as a whole construct (not reading proficiency only).