n Analysis of the Third Year Students’ Ability in Comprehending Argumentative Essay at English Department of Bung Hatta University

Abstrak

Argumentative essay is an essay that contains of our idea about reason to support our opinion (Oshima and Houge 2006:142). Argumentative essay is one of essays that has been thaught at English Department of Bung Hatta University. Based on the researcher’s experience during studying in reading essay class, the students were not interested in reading. Some of them face a lot of problem such as, they were lazy to read many paragraphs, they did not focused when reading, and they had a lack of vocabulary. Related to this, the researcher conducted this research on purpose of describing the ability of the third year students at English Department of Bung Hatta University in comprehending argumentative essay.

 The design of this research was descriptive research. The researcher did this research in Padang at English Department of Bung Hatta University.  The members of population of this research were 21. The researcher used total sampling in taking the sample. The researcher used this technique because the number of population at the third year students at English Department of Bung Hatta University were less than 100 so the researcher put all of population as the sample of this research. In collecting the data the researcher used reading test. Before the real test, the researcher did the try-out. The reliability index was 0.84 or very high correlation. The items were 30, there were 6 items were revised and 24 items were accepted or good item. The total items for the real test were 30.

The researcher found that the students’ ability in comprehending argumentative essay was moderate. It was indicated by the fact that 12 students had moderate ability, the percentage was 57.14%. In more specific, the researcher found their ability in comprehending introduction of argumentative essay was good. It was proved by the fact that 12 students had good ability, the percentage was 57.14%. Next, their ability in comprehending body of argumentative text was low. It was proved by the fact that 10 students had low ability, the percentage was 47.62%. Last their ability in comprehending conclusion of argumentative essay was good. It was proved by the fact that 10 students had good ability, the percentage was 47.62 %.

Based on the findings, a simple conclusion could be drawn that the ability of the third year students at English Department of Bung Hatta University in comprehending argumentative essay was moderate. The researcher suggested to the lecturers at English Department to review the material about argumentative essay. For the students, they are suggested to learn more about argumentative essay and to do more exercises about reading comprehension especially argumentative essay. The researcher suggested to the next researcher to do a research on the difficulties of students in comprehending argumentative essay.

Key words : Ability, comprehending, argumentative essay