THE EFFECT OF TEACHING STRATEGIES AND CRITICAL THINKING ON STUDENTS ACHIEVEMENT IN READING COMPREHENSION

The objectives of this experimental research were to investigate whether: (1) students achievement in reading comprehension taught by using Collaborative Strategic Reading was higher than that taught by using Transactional Strategies Instruction, (2) reading comprehension achievement of students with high critical thinking was higher than that of students with low critical thinking, and (3) there was interaction between teaching strategies and critical thinking on students achievement in reading comprehension. The population of this research was students grade X of SMA Kartika I-1 Medan in the 2013/ 2014 school year. The total number of the population was 120 students. There were 80 students selected as the sample of this research by applying cluster random sampling with lottery technique. The research design was experimental research design by using factorial design 2x2. The students were divided into two experimental groups. The experimental group I was treated by using Collaborative Strategic Reading and the experimental group II was treated by using Transactional Strategies Instruction. The critical thinking test was conducted for classifying the students upon the high critical thinking and the low critical thinking. Students achievement in reading comprehension was measured by using reading comprehension test. The data were analyzed by applying two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) at the level of significance α=0.05. The results reveals that (1) students achievement in reading expository text taught by using Collaborative Strategic Reading was higher than that taught by using Transactional Strategies Instruction, with Fobs = 6.935 > F tab = 3.16, (2) students achievement in reading comprehension of students with high critical thinking was higher than that of students with low critical thinking, with Fobs=92.555> Ftab=3.16, (3) there is interaction between teaching strategies and critical thinking on students achievement in reading comprehension with Fobs=16.221>Ftab=3.16. After computing the Scheffe test, the result showed that high critical thinking students got higher result if they were taught by Collaborative Strategic Reading and low critical thinking students got higher result if they were taught by Transactional Strategies Instruction.